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OF THE 



BIRTH-DAY 



OP 



DANIEL WEBSTER, 




CELEBRATED AT THE 



EEYERE HOUSE BOSTON, 



JANUARY 18, 1856. 




BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE DAILY COURIER. 

1856. 

PRESS OF JOSEPH G. TORREY, 32 CONGRESS STREET. 




IN MEMORY 



OF 

6> 3. 




DANIEL WEBSTER. 







He is gone who seemed so great. 

Gone ; but nothing can bereave him 

Of the force he made his own 

Being here, and we believe him 

Something far advanced in state, 

And that he wears a truer crown 

Than any wreath that man can weave him. 



:p ~r e f a. c e . 



In compliance with a general wish that the pro- 
ceedings and incidents of the Webster Banquet of 
1856 should be preserved in a tangible form, I have 
collected them together, and caused them to be printed 
within these covers. The speeches have been revised 
by their authors and perhaps improved, if it were pos- 
sible to improve performances so finished. The 
address of Mr. Everett, who presided at the dinner, 
was worthy of the speaker and worthy of the sub- 
ject: and higher praise can hardly be accorded to 
it. It is a production not more remarkable for the 
splendor and eloquence of particular passages than 
for its general fidelity and accuracy as a delineation of 
Mr. Webster's heart and character, as they were re- 
vealed to his friends. It was delivered with an energy 
and animation which gave due force and expression to 
every excellence. The speeches of Messrs. Hillarcl, 
Nye, Schenck, Lord, and Sanborn are — considered as 
unstudied efforts — among the most eloquent and 



appropriate tributes ever paid to the memory of 
Mr. Webster. 

There was one vacant chair at the banquet table. 
Mr. Choate, who had prepared himself for the occasion, 
was taken quite ill in the afternoon, and was unable 
to attend. His letter to Mr. Harvey will be found 
among the proceedings of the evening. 

In printing the names of the subscribers to the 

dinner it ought to be noted, in explanation, that the 

festival not being strictly public, and the hall at the 

Revere House of comparatively limited size, the tickets 

for the dinner were not on sale, and it was out of the 

power of many gentlemen who desired it, to obtain 

them. 

j. c. 
Boston Courier Office, \ 

February 22, 1856. J 



SUBSCRIBERS TO THE BANQUET. 



Edward Everett, 
William Appleton, 
Lewis W. Tappan, 
George B. Upton, 
Isaac Thacher, 
Franklin Haven, 
Charles H. Mills, 
Peter Butler, jun. 
Otis P. Lord, 
F. W. Lincoln, 
Wm. A. Crocker, 
David Sears, 
Wm. Dehon, 
James S. Amory, 
George Ashmun, 
Fletcher Webster, 
Wm. Amory, 
George R. Sampson, 
John S. Tyler, 
Tolman Willey, 
O. D. Ashley, 
William Thomas, 
Peter C. Brooks, 
T. H. Perkins, 
B. R. Keith, 
Wm. W. Tucker, 
George P. Upham, 
J. N. Fiske, 
Vernon Brown, 



Rufus Choate, 
Samuel A. Eliot, 
Albert Fearing, 

D. Whiton, 
Saml. T. Dana, 
James K. Mills, 
H. K. Horton, 
M. H. Simpson, 
Horatio Woodman, 
Saml. A. Appleton, 
Enoch Train, 
Charles Larkin, 

J. P. Healy, 
J. M. Beebe, 
James W. Paige, 

E. D. Sanborn, 
Peter Harvey, 
Saml. Hooper, 
J. M. Howe, 
Jarvis Slade, 
Chas. F. Bradford, 
W. H. Davis, 
Lewis Bullard, 
Chas. Torrey, 
Albert F. Sise, 
Henry Upham, 
Wm. Davis, jun., 
George Beaty Blake, 
B. K. Hough, 



N. A. Thompson, 
James Read, 
C. C. Chadwick, 
George C. Richardson, 
David A. Simmons, 
Kirk Boott, 
Patrick Grant, 
Alanson Tucker, jun. 
R. W. Newton, 
R. B. Forbes, 
Edmund Dwight, 
Edwd. E. Pratt, 
J. B. Tobey, 
Wm. Almy, 
Israel Whitney, 

E. B. Bigelow, 
Henry L. Hallett, 
B. E. Bates, 

S. E. Guild, 
Charles Gordon, 
O. W. Holmes, 
A. S. Wheeler, 

F. O. Prince, 
George Ticknor, 
Melancthon Smith, 
Robt. M. Mason, 
Wm. T. Eustis, 
Saml. H. Gookin, 
George L. Pratt, 
H. C. Hutchins, 
George O. Whitney, 
Nathan Hale, 



Otis Kimball, 
Sidney Brooks, 
Francis Bacon, 

E. D. Brigham, 
Robt. M. Morse, 
Adolphus Davis, 
Thomas Lamb, 
S. E. Sprague, 
John T. Heard, 
Francis C. Gray, 
J. M. Bell, 
Wm. S. Thatcher, 
Wm. D. Ticknor, 
G. Tuckerman, jun., 
A. H. Nelson, 
John A. Blanchard, 
J. W. Edmands, 
Harrison Ritchie, 
George S. Hillard, 

F. Skinner, 

Wm. C. Rives, jun., 
E. Palmer, jun. 

D. F. M'Gilvray, 

E. F. Farrington, 
Wm. W. Greenough, 
E. F. Wilson, 

A. T. Hazard, 
E. R. Mudge, 
S. R. Spaulding, 
S. W. Marston, jun., 
George B. Nichols, 
John Foster, 



A. H. Rice, 
J. C. Boyd, 
Wm. G. Bates, 
Levi Brigham, 
George Bateman, 
E. B. Strout, 
Edward B. Everett, 
H. Sidney Everett, 
George W. "Warren, 
Wm. F. Weld, 
James Lodge, 
J. Brooks Fenno, 
James French, 
Joseph Coolidge, 
Wm. E. Lawrence, 
J. H. W. Page, 
C. J. B. Moulton, 
Ebenezer Cutler, 
Homer Foot, 
Franklin Morgan, 
S. G. Snelling, 
Stephen N. Stockwell, 
Charles Hale, 



E. P. Tileston, 
Wm. C. Ferris, 
E. G. Stanwood, 

J. B. Glover, 
Henry Lyman, 
John Clark, 
Benj. P. Shillaber, 
J. B. Joy, 

Eichd. Baker, jun., 
Thomas Chickering, 
N. L. Frothingham, 
Edwd. G. Parker, 
Horace G. Hutchins, 
Chas. A. White, 
James W. Sever, 
C. P. Curtis, 
J. H. Eastburn, 
H. C. Deming, 
J. B. Bunrill, 
George T. Davis, 
R. M. Blatchford, 
Rev. C. Robbins, 

Chaplain. 



THE DINNER 



Was served in the gentlemen's ordinary. In the 
reception-room were Hoyt's full length portrait of 
Webster, and Otis's full length portrait of Washing- 
ton. The dinner tables were gorgeously and tastefully 
decorated with flowers and flags. Behind the Presi- 
dent of the feast — the Hon. Edward Everett — was 
a portrait of Mr. Webster, painted by Ames, and at 
the other end of the hall, Clavenger's bust. Across the 
partition, on the right of the President's chair, was 
displayed this motto : 



" While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, 
gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and 
our children. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate 
the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that 
curtain may not rise ! God grant that on my vision 
never may be opened what lies behind ! When my 
eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun 
in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken 
and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union." 

Behind the President's chair was the following : 

" Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather 
behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now 
known and honored throughout the earth, still full 
high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their 
original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a 
single star obscured ; but everywhere spread all over 

2 



10 



in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample 
folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and 
in every wind under the whole heavens," 

On the east wall of the hall was displayed — the 
continuation of the sentence from the same famous 
speech of Mr. Webster — these words : 

" That sentiment dear to every American heart, — 
Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and in- 
separable." 

Thirty-two flags were displayed on the tables, and 
a bouquet of flowers attended every plate. On the 
first (of the three tables) was the pillar of state, sur- 
mounted by a golden eagle ; on the base of the pillar 
were these mottos, taken from one of Mr. Webster's 
replies to Mr. Calhoun : 

" Yes, sir, I would act as if our fathers, who formed 
it for us, and who bequeathed it to us, were looking on 
me." 

" I would act, too, as if the eye of posterity was 
gazing on me." 

" I came into public life, sir, in the services of the 
United States. On that broad altar all my public vows 
have been made." 

" I move off under no banner not known to the 
whole American people, and to their constitution and 
laws." 

On the second table was a model of the mansion at 
Marshneld ; and on the third, an exact copy of the 
house in which Mr. Webster was born. 



11 



On the right hand of Mr. Everett were seated 
Fletcher Webster, Esq., Hon. R. H. Schenck of Ohio, 
Hon. George Ashrnun of Springfield, Nathan Hale, 
Esq., James W. Paige, Esq.; and on his left hand, the 
Rev. Chandler Robbins, Hon. Samuel A. Eliot, Hon. 
David Sears, George Ticknor, Esq., and Hon. William 
Appleton. We also recognized, among those present, 
Hon. George S. Hillard, Hon. Otis P. Lord of Salem, 
Hon. George T. Davis of Greenfield, Dr. Oliver W. 
Holmes of Boston, Hon. Mr. Hazard of Connecticut. 

Before dinner, the following prayer was offered by 
the Rev. Chandler Robbins : 

"Almighty God, God of our fathers, our God and 
our King ! Living by thy compassion, surrounded by 
thy goodness, overshadowed with thy mercy, we praise 
Thee, we worship Thee, we give glory to thy name. 

"With joy and thankfulness we acknowledge the 
blessings Thou hast poured upon our country, and the 
favors with which Thou hast crowned our lives. We 
thank Thee for all the great, and wise, and good men 
who have contributed to the foundation, advancement, 
and harmony of the American Republic: but especially 
do we give thanks, at this hour, for the valuable ser- 
vices of that statesman and patriot whose memory we 
have met to revive and cherish in our hearts, and the 
influences of all whose wise counsels we seek to perpetu- 
ate for his country's good, and his own just honor. We 
thank Thee for his printed works, so free from the stain 
of immoral sentiment, selfish ambition, and irreverent 
phrase, but crowded with wise and clear sentences — 
maxims, and oracles of constitutional liberty and po- 
litical science. 

" For all that was great, and useful, and laudable in 
his public and private life, we thank Thee, O God ; 
though we put not our trust in man, and remember 



12 



that in thy sight the princes and judges of the earth 
are vanity. 

" Attend and follow, we beseech Thee, with thy 
blessing these commemorative festivities. Fill our 
hearts with all pure and just sentiments, all liberal 
and patriotic affections. Purify, strengthen, and har- 
monize our Union. Let peace and righteousness dwell 
and grow together within our borders. Mercifully 
pardon our sins, accept our prayers, and help us all 
to live to thy glory, through our Blessed Lord and 
Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen." 

The dinner was sumptuous. It was, perhaps, the 
most elegant public dinner ever given in Boston. 
When the courses were over, and the cloths removed 
for the dessert, the servants withdrew, leaving the 
hall undisturbed. A large number of ladies were now 
admitted into the grand entry, within sight and 
hearing. Mr. Everett rose at seven o'clock, and spoke 
thus : 

Speech of the Hon. Edward Everett. 

Gentlemen, — I rise in pursuance of the object which 
has brought us together at this time ; the only object, 
certainly, which, after long retirement from scenes of 
public festivity, would have induced me to occupy the 
chair in which you have placed me this evening. We 
have assembled on this, the anniversary of his birth- 
day, to pay an affectionate tribute to one of the great- 
est and wisest and purest of the patriots, statesmen, 
and citizens of America. Still, my friends, I do not 
rise to pronounce the eulogy of Daniel Webster. That 
work was performed, at the time of his lamented de- 
cease, in almost every part of the country, and by a 
greater number of the distinguished writers and speak- 



13 



ers of the United States than have, in any former in- 
stance, with the single exception of Washington, paid 
this last office of respect to departed worth. It was 
in many cases performed with extraordinary ability; 
among others, especially, by gentlemen of more than 
one profession, who favor ns with their presence on this 
occasion, whose performances, besides doing noble 
justice to their great theme, will take a perma- 
nent place in the literature of the country. In their 
presence I rise for no such presumptuous purpose; 
before this company I rise for no such superfluous 
attempt, as that of pronouncing a formal eulogy on the 
public character and services of the great man to whose 
precious memory we consecrate the evening. 

On the contrary, gentlemen, on this occasion and in 
this circle of friends, most of whom, in a greater or 
less degree of intimacy, were individually known to 
to him, and had cultivated kindly personal relations 
with him, I wish rather to speak of the man. Let us 
to-night leave his great fame to the country's, to the 
world's care. It needs not our poor attestation ; it has 
passed into the history of the United States, where it 
will last and bloom forever. The freshly remembered 
presence of the great jurist, invisible to the eye of 
sense, still abides in our tribunals; the voice of the 
matchless orator yet echoes from the arches of Faneuil 
Hall. If ever it is given to the spirits of the departed 
to revisit the sphere of their activity and usefulness on 
earth, who can doubt that the shade of Webster re- 
returns with anxiety to that Senate which so often 
hung with admiration upon his lips, and walks by night 
an unseen guardian along the ramparts of the capitol ? 
Of what he was and what he did, and how he spoke 



14 



and wrote and counselled, and persuaded and con- 
trolled and swayed in all these great public capacities, 
his printed works contain the proof and the exemplifi- 
cation ; recent recollection preserves the memory ; and 
eulogy, warm and emphatic, but not exaggerated, has 
set forth the marvellous record. If all else which in 
various parts of the country has been spoken and 
written of him should be forgotten, (and there is much, 
very much that will be permanently remembered,) the 
eulogy of Mr. Hillard pronounced at the request of the 
city of Boston, and the discourse of Mr. Choate de- 
livered at Dartmouth College, — whose great sufficiency 
of fame it is to have nurtured two such pupils, — have 
unfolded the intellectual, professional, and public cha- 
racter of Daniel Webster, with an acuteness of analy- 
sis, a wealth of illustration, and a splendor of dic- 
tion, which will convey to all coming time an adequate 
and vivid conception of the great original. 

Ah, my friends, how little they knew of him, who 
knew him only as a public man ; how little they knew 
even of his personal appearance, who never saw his 
countenance except, when darkened with the shadows 
of his sometimes saddened brow, or clothed with the 
terrors of his deep, flashing eye ! These at times gave 
a severity to his aspect, which added not a little to the 
desolating force of his invective and the withering 
power of his sarcasm, when compelled to put on the 
panoply of forensic or parliamentary war. But no 
one really knew even his personal appearance who was 
not familiar with his radiant glance, his sweet ex- 
pression, his beaming smile, lighting up the circle of 
those whom he loved and trusted, and hi whose sym- 
pathy he confided ! 



15 



Were I to fix upon any one trait as the prominent 
trait of his personal character, it would be his social 
disposition, his loving heart. If there ever was a per- 
son who felt all the meaning of the divine utterance, " it 
is not good that man should be alone," it was he. Not- 
withstanding the vast resources of his own mind, and 
the materials for self-communion laid up in the store- 
house of such an intellect, few men whom I have 
known have been so little addicted to solitary and 
meditative introspection; to few have social inter- 
course, sympathy, and communion with kindred or 
friendly spirits been so grateful and even necessary. 
Unless actually occupied with his pen or his books, 
and coerced into the solitude of his study for some 
specific employment, he shunned to be alone. He 
preferred dictation to solitary composition, especially 
in the latter part of his life, and he much liked, on the 
the eve of a great effort, if it had been hi his power 
to reduce the heads of his argument to writing, to go 
over them with a friend. 

Although it is not my purpose, as I have said, on 
this occasion to dwell on political topics, I may, in 
illustration of this last remark, observe that it was 
my'happiness, at his request, to pass a part of the 
evening of the 25th January, 1830, with him; and 
he went over to me from a very concise brief the main 
topics of the speech prepared for the following day — 
the second speech on Foot's resolution, which he 
accounted the greatest of his parliamentary efforts. 
Intense anticipation, I need not remind you, awaited 
that effort, both at Washington and throughout the 
country. A pretty formidable personal attack was to 



16 



be repelled; New England was to be vindicated 
against elaborate disparagement; and, more than all, 
the true theory of the Constitution, as heretofore gene- 
rally understood, was to be maintained against a new 
interpretation, devised by perhaps the acutest logician 
in the country; asserted with equal confidence and 
fervor; and menacing a revolution in the government. 
Never had a public speaker a harder task to perform ; 
and except on the last great topic, which undoubtedly 
was familiar to his habitual contemplations, his oppor- 
tunity for preparation had been most inconsiderable, 
— for the argument of his accomplished opponent 
had been concluded but the day before the reply was 
to be made. 

I sat an hour and a half with Mr. Webster the 
evening before this great eifort. The impassioned 
parts of his speech, and those in which the person- 
alities of his antagonist were retorted, were hardly 
indicated in his prepared brief. So calm and unim- 
passioned was he, so entirely at ease and free from 
that nervous excitement which is almost unavoidable, 
so near the moment which is to put the whole man to 
the proof, that I was tempted, absurdly enough, to 
think him not sufficiently aware of the magnitude of 
the occasion. I ventured even to intimate to him, 
that what he was to say the next day would, in a 
fortnight's time, be read by every grown man in the 
country. But I soon perceived that his calmness was 
the repose of conscious power. The battle had been 
fought and won within, upon the broad field of his 
own capacious mind; for it was Mr. Webster's habit 
first to state to himself his opponent's argument in its 



17 



utmost strength, and having overthrown it in that 
form, he feared the efforts of no other antagonist. 
Hence it came to pass that he was never taken by 
surprise, by any turn of the discussion. Besides, 
the moment and the occasion were too important for 
trepidation. A surgeon might as well be nervous, 
who is going to cut within a hair's breadth of a great 
artery. He was not only at ease, but sportive and 
full of anecdote; and, as he told the Senate playfully 
the next day, he slept soundly that night on the for- 
midable assault of his accomplished adversary. So 
the great Conde slept on the eve of the battle of 
Rocroi; so Alexander the Great slept on the eve of the 
battle of Arbela ; and so they awoke to deeds of im- 
mortal fame. As I saw him in the evening, (if I may 
borrow an illustration from his favorite amusement,) 
he was as unconcerned and as free of spirit as some 
here present have often seen him, while floating in his 
fishing boat along a hazy shore, gently rocking on the 
tranquil tide, dropping his line here and there, with 
the varying fortune of the sport. The next morning, 
he was like some mighty Admiral, dark and terrible ; 
casting the long shadow of his frowning tiers far over 
the sea, that seemed to sink beneath him; his broad 
pendant streaming at the main, the stars and the stripes 
at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak ; and bearing down 
like a tempest upon his antagonist, with all his can- 
vas strained to the wind, and all his thunders roaring 
from his broadsides. 

Do not wonder, my friends, that I employ these 
military illustrations. I do so partly because, to the 
imaginations of most men, they suggest the liveliest 
3 



18 



conceptions of contending energy and power; partly 
because they are in themselves appropriate — 

" Peace hath her victories 
Not less renowned than war." 

On the two sides of this great parliamentary 
contest there were displayed as much intellect- 
ual power, as much moral courage, as much eleva- 
tion of soul, as in any campaign, ancient or 
modern. And from the wars of those old Assyrian 
kings and conquerors, whose marble effigies, now 
lying on the floor of Mr. William Appleton's ware- 
house, after sleeping for twenty-five hundred years 
on the banks of the Tigris, have, by the strange vicissi- 
tudes and changes of human things, been dug up from 
the ruins of Nineveh and transported across the 
Atlantic — a wonder and a show, — I say from the 
wars of Sennacherib and Nimrocl himself, whose por- 
traits, for aught I know to the contrary, are among 
the number, down to that now raging in the Crimea, 
there never was a battle fought whose consequences 
were more important to humanity, than the mainte- 
nance or overthrow of that constitutional Union which, 
in the language of Washington, "makes us one peo- 
ple." Yes, better had Alexander perished in the 
Granicus, better had Asdrubal triumphed at the 
Metaurus, better had Nelson fallen at the mouth of 
the Nile or Napoleon on the field of Marengo, than 
that one link should part in the golden chain which 
binds this Union together, or the blessings of a peace- 
ful confederacy be exchanged for the secular curses 
of border war. 

That strong social disposition of Mr. Webster of 



19 



which I have spoken, of course, fitted him admirably 
for convivial intercourse. I use that expression in its 
proper etymological sense, pointed out by Cicero hi a 
letter to one of his friends, and referred to by Mr. 
Webster in a charming note to Mr. Rush, in which 
he contrasts the superior refinement of the Roman 
word convivium, living together, with the Greek sym- 
posium, which is merely drinking together. Mr. Web- 
ster entered most fully into the sentiment of Cicero, 
so beautifully expressed in the letter alluded to: — 
" Seel, mehercule, mi Pcete, extra jocum, moneo te, 
quod pertinere ad beate vivendum arbitror ; ut cum 
viris bonis, jucundis, amantibus tui vivas. Nihil aptius 
vitae; nihil ad beate vivendum accommodatius. Nee 
id ad voluptatem refero, sed ad communitatem \ita3 et 
victus, remissionemque animorum, quae maxime ser- 
mone efficitur familiari, qui est in convivio dulcissi- 
mus, ut sapientius nostri quam Graeci; illi ovuttoo-w, 
ant ovvdeinva^ id est compotationes aut conccenationes : 
nos convivia ; quod turn maxime simul vivitur." * Mr. 
Webster loved to live with his friends, with " good, 
pleasant men who loved him." This was his delight, 
alike when oppressed with the multiplied cares of 

* Epist. ad Divers. IX., 24: — "But, without a joke, my dear Poetus, I 
would advise you to spend your time in the society of a set of worthy and cheer- 
ful friends ; as there is nothing, in my estimation, that more effectually con- 
tributes to the happiness of human life. When I say this, I do not mean with 
respect to the sensual gratifications of the palate, but with regard to that pleasing 
relaxation of the mind, which is best produced by the freedom of social converse, 
and which is always most agreeable at the hour of meals. For this reason the 
Latin language is much happier, I think, than the Greek, in the term it employs 
to express assemblies of this sort. In the latter they are called by a word which 
signifies compotations, whereas in ours they are more emphatically styled con- 
vivial meetings; intimating that it is in a communication of this nature, that life 
is most truly enjoyed." Melmoth XIII., 9. 



20 



office at Washington, and when enjoying the repose 
and quiet of Marshfield. He loved to meet his friends 
at the social board, because it is there that men most 
cast off the burden of business and thought ; there, as 
Cicero says, that conversation is sweetest ; there that 
the kindly affections have the fullest play. By the 
social sympathies thus cultivated, the genial conscious- 
ness of individual existence becomes more intense. 
And who that ever enjoyed it can forget the charm of 
his hospitality, so liberal, so choice, so thoughtful \ 
In the very last days of his life, and when confined to 
the couch from which he never rose, he continued to 
give minute directions for the hospitable entertain- 
ment of the anxious and sorrowful friends who came 
to Marshfield. 

If he enjoyed society himself, how much he contrib- 
uted to its enjoyment in others ! His colloquial pow- 
ers were, I think, quite equal to his parliamentary 
and forensic talent. He had something instructive or 
ingenious to say on the most familiar occasion. In his 
playful mood he was not afraid to trifle ; but he never 
prosed, never indulged in common place, never dog- 
matized, was never affected. His range of informa- 
tion was so vast, his observation so acute and accurate, 
his tact in separating the important from the unessen- 
tial so nice, his memory so retentive, his command of 
language so great, that his common table-talk, if taken 
down from his lips would have stood the test of publi- 
cation. He had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and 
repeated or listened to a humorous anecdote with in- 
finite glee. He narrated with unsurpassed clearness, 
brevity, and grace, — no tedious, unnecessary details 



21 



to spin out the story, the fault of most professed 
raconteurs, — but its main points set each in its place, 
so as often to make a little dinner-table epic, but all 
naturally and without effort. He delighted in anec- 
dotes of eminent men, especially of eminent Ameri- 
cans, and his memory was stored with them. He 
would sometimes briefly discuss a question in natural 
history, relative for instance to climate, or the races, 
and habits and breeds of the different domestic ani- 
mals, or the various kinds of our native game, for he 
knew the secrets of the forest. He delighted to treat 
a topic drawn from life, manners, and the great indus- 
trial pursuits of the community ; and he did it with 
such spirit and originality as to throw a charm around 
subjects which, in common hands, are trivial and un- 
inviting. Nor were the stores of our sterling: litera- 
ture less at his command. He had such an acquaint- 
ance with the great writers of our language, especially 
the historians and poets, as enabled him to enrich his 
conversation with the most apposite allusions and illus- 
trations. When the occasion and character of the 
company invited it, his conversation turned on higher 
themes, and sometimes rose to the moral sublime. 
He was not fond of the technical language of meta- 
physics, but he had grappled, like the giant he was, 
with its most formidable problems. Dr. Johnson was 
wont to say of Burke, that a stranger who should 
chance to meet him under a shed in a shower of rain 
would say, " this was an extraordinary man." A 
stranger, who did not know Mr. Webster, might have 
passed a day with him in his seasons of relaxation, 
without detecting the jurist or the statesman, but he 



22 



could not have passed a half an hour with him, with- 
out coming to the conclusion that he was one of the 
best informed of men. 

His personal appearance contributed to the attrac- 
tion of his social intercourse. His countenance, frame, 
expression, and presence arrested and fixed attention. 
You could not pass him unnoticed in a crowd ; nor 
fail to observe in him a man of high mark and charac- 
ter. No one coidd see him and not wish to see more 
of him, and this alike in public and private. Not- 
withstanding his noble stature and athletic develop- 
ment in after life, he was in his childhood frail and 
tender. In an autobiographical sketch taken down from 
his dictation, he says : " I was a weak and ailing child 
and suffered from almost every disease that flesh is 
heir to. I was not able to work on the farm." This 
it was, which determined his father, though in straight- 
ened circumstances, to make the effort to send Daniel 
to college ; because, as some said, " he was not fit for 
any thing else." His brother Joe, " the wit of the 
family," remarked that " it was necessary to send 
Dan to school to make him equal to the rest of the 
boys." 

It was a somewhat curious feature of New England 
life at that time, not wholly unknown now, that it was 
thus owing to his being " a weak and ailing child," that 
Mr. Webster received in youth the benefit of a college 
education. This inversion of the great law of our na- 
ture, which requires in the perfect man "a sound 
mind in a sound body," was, I suppose, occasioned by 
the arduous life required to be led by the industrious 
yeoman in a new country. Whatever was the cause, 



23 



in a large family of sons the privilege of a " public 
education," as it was called, was usually reserved for 
the narrow-chested, pale-faced Benjamin of the flock, 
the mother's darling. In consideration of showing 
symptoms of tendency to pulmonary disease, he was 
selected for a life of hard study and sedentary labour, 
flickered awhile in the pulpit, and too often crept 
before he was fifty to a corner of his own church 
yard. 

Mr. Webster, by the blessing of Providence, over- 
came the infirmities of his childhood, and although 
not long subjected to the hardships of the frontier, 
grew up in the love of out-door life, and all the manly 
and healthful pursuits, exercises, and sports of the 
country. Born upon the verge of civilization, — his 
father's house the farthest by four miles on the Indian 
trail to Canada, — he retained to the last his love for 
that pure fresh nature in which he was cradled. The 
dashing streams, which conduct the waters of the 
queen of New Hampshire's lakes to the noble Merri- 
mac ; the superb group of mountains (the Switzer- 
land of the United States) among which those waters 
have their sources ; the primeval forest, whose date 
runs back to the twelfth verse of the first chapter of 
Genesis, and never since creation yielded to the 
settler's axe ; the gray buttresses of granite which 
prop the eternal hills ; the sacred alternation of the 
seasons, with its magic play on field and forest and 
flood; the gleaming surface of lake and stream in 
summer; the icy pavement with which they are 
floored in winter ; the verdure of spring, the prismat- 
ic tints of the autumnal woods, the leafless branch 



24 



es of December, glittering like arches and corridors 
of silver and crystal in the enchanted palaces of fairy 
land; sparkling in the morning sun with winter's 
jewelry, diamond and amethyst, and ruby and sapph- 
ire; the cathedral aisles of pathless woods, — the 
mournful hemlock, the "cloud-seeking" pine, — hung 
with drooping creepers, like funeral banners pendent 
from the roof of chancel or transept over the graves of 
the old lords of the soil; — these all retained for him 
to the close of his life an undying charm. 

But though he ever clung with fondness to the w r ild 
mountain scenery amidst which he was born and passed 
his youth, he loved nature in all her other aspects. 
The simple beauty to which he had brought his farm 
at Marshfield, its approaches, its grassy lawns, its 
well-disposed plantations on the hill-sides, unpretend- 
ing but tasteful, and forming a pleasing interchange 
with his large corn fields and turnip patches, showed 
his sensibility to the milder beauties of civilized cul- 
ture. He understood, no one better, the secret 
sympathy of nature and art, and often conversed on the 
principles which govern their relations with each other. 
He appreciated the infinite bounty with which'nature 
furnishes materials to the artistic powers of man, at 
once her servant and master ; and he knew not less that 
the highest exercise of art is but to imitate, interpret, 
select and combine the properties, affinities and pro- 
portions of nature; that in reality they are parts of one 
great system : for nature is the Divine Creator's art, 
and art is rational man's creation. The meanest weed 
and the humblest zoophyte is a most wondrous work 
of a more than human art, and a chronometer or an 



25 



electric telegraph is no dead machine, but a portion of 
the living and inscrutable powers of nature — magnet- 
ism, cohesion, elasticity, gravitation, — combined in 
new forms and skilfully arranged conditions, boxed up 
and packed away, if I may so express it, for his con- 
venience and service, by the creative skill of man. 

But not less than mountain or plain he loved the 
sea. He loved to walk and ride and drive upon that 
magnificent beach which stretches from Green Har- 
bour all round to the Gurnet. He loved to pass hours, 
I might say days, in his little boat. He loved to 
breathe the healthful air of the salt water. He loved 
the music of the ocean, through all the mighty octaves 
deep and high of its far-resounding register ; from the 
lazy plash of a midsummer's ripple upon the margin of 
some oozy creek to the sharp howl of the tempest, 
which wrenches a light house from its clamps and 
bolts, fathom deep in the living rock, as easily as a 
gardener pulls a weed from his flower border. There 
was, in fact, a manifest sympathy between his great 
mind and this world-surrounding, deep heaving, mea- 
sureless, everlasting, infinite deep. His thoughts and 
conversation often turned upon it and its great organic 
relations with other parts of nature and with man. I 
have heard him allude to the mysterious analogy 
between the circulation carried on by veins and arteries, 
heart and lungs, and the wonderful interchange of 
venous and arterial blood, — that miraculous compli- 
cation which lies at the basis of animal life, — and that 
equally complicated and more stupendous circulation 
of river, ocean, vapour, and rain, which from the fresh 
currents of the rivers fills the depths of the salt sea; 
4 



26 



then by vaporous distillation carries the waters which 
are under the firmament up to the cloudy cisterns of 
the waters above the firmament; wafts them on the 
dripping wings of the wind against the mountain sides, 
precipitates them to the earth in the form of rain, and 
leads them again through a thousand channels, open 
and secret, to the beds of the rivers, and so back to the 
sea. He loved to contemplate the profusion of life in 
the ocean, from the scarcely animated gelatinous spark, 
which lights up the bow of the plunging vessel with 
its spectral phosphorescent gleam, through the vast 
varieties of fish that form so important a part of the 
food of man, up to the mighty monsters which wallow 
through its depths, from which they are dragged by the 
skill and courage of the whaleman, to light our dwel- 
lings; — a species of industry, by the way, first prac- 
tised in this country in the waters of the old colony, 
and along this very beach and the adjoining shores .* 
Few persons, not professed men of science, were as 
well acquainted as Mr. Webster with the natural his- 
tory of the sea. And then the all-important functions 
of the ocean in reference to the civilization and social 
progress, to the commercial and political relations of 
nations. You can easily see, my friends, by how many 
points of attraction a mind like his would be led to 
meditate on these subjects. 

I remember with great distinctness a drive which I 
took with him upon that noble beach to which I have 
just alluded, in the summer of 1849. It was a rainy 
morning, and we were in an open chaise. Heavy 
clouds alternately lifting and sinking, hung over the 

* N. A. Review, XXXVII , 100; Mass. Hist. Coll., First Series, III., 157. 



27 



water, and the wind was chilly for the season, from 
the north-east, but he enjoyed the drive. The state 
of public affairs was interesting at the commencement 
of a new administration, but not a word was said of 
politics. He talked principally of the scene before us, 
of the sea, dwelling upon some of the topics to which 
I have alluded. He did not like the epithet "barren," 
applied to the sea in Homer, as usually translated, and 
was gratified with the suggestion that there were other 
interpretations of the word more elevated and full of 
meaning. As we drove off the beach, being compelled 
to do so by the shower, he said, " when I am at 
Franklin, I think there is nothing like the rivers and 
mountains, and when I come to Marshfield, it seems 
to me there is nothing like the sea. There is certainly 
something in it which fills the mind, and which defies 
expression. Upon the whole, Byron was right: — 

" There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture in the lonely shore, 

There is society where none intrudes 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar. 

I love not man the less, but nature more 
For these our interviews, in which I steal 

From all I may be and have been before, 
To mingle with the universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, but cannot all conceal." 

Mr. Webster's keen relish for the beauties of nature 
gave a freshness to his perception of her every day 
occurrences, which, in consequence of their familiarity, 
are looked upon by most persons with indifference. 
Witness that beautiful letter on " the Morning" which 
has found its way into the papers. Surely never was 



28 



such a letter written before by a statesman in political 
life starting on a tour of observation. Spending but 
a single day in Richmond, he rises at four o'clock to 
survey the city in the gray of the morning, and 
returning to his lodgings at five o'clock, addresses 
that admirable letter to his friend and relative, Mrs. 
J. W. Paige, of Boston : 

"It is morning, and a morning sweet, fresh, and 
delightful. Every body knows the morning in its 
metaphorical sense applied to so many objects and on 
so many occasions. * * * But the morning itself 
few people, inhabitants of cities, know any thing 
about. Among our good people of Boston, not one 
in a thousand sees the sun rise once in a year. They 
know nothing of the morning. Their idea of it is, 
that it is that part of the day which comes along 
after a cup of coffee and a beef-steak, or a piece of 
toast. "With them morning is not an issuing of 
light, a new bursting forth of the sun, a new waking 
up of all that has life from a sort of temporary 
death, to behold again the works of God, the 
heavens and the earth. * * * The first faint 
streaks of light, the earliest purpling of the east 
which the lark springs up to greet, and the deeper 
and deeper coloring into orange and red, till at length 
the glorious sun is seen, ' regent of day,' — this they 
never enjoy, for they never see. 

" Beautiful descriptions of the sun abound in all 
languages, but they are the strongest perhaps in those 
of the East, where the sun is so often an object of 
worship 1 . King David speaks of taking to himself 
the ' wings of the morning.' This is highly poetical 
and beautiful. The wings of the morning are the 
beams of the rising sun. Eavs of light are wines. It 
is thus said that ' the sun of righteousness shall arise 
with healing in his wings;' a rising sun which shall 



29 



scatter life and health and joy throughout the uni- 
verse." * * 

" I know the morning, I am acquainted with it, 
and I love it, fresh and sweet as it is, a daily new 
creation breaking forth and calling all that have life 
and breath, and being to new adoration, new enjoy 
ment and new gratitude." 

But Mr. Webster's mind was eminently practical, 
and it was by no means through his taste and feelings 
alone that he entered into this intimate communion 
with nature. He allied himself to it by one of the 
chief pursuits of his life. Notwithstanding the en- 
grossing nature of his professional and official duties, 
he gave as much time and thought to agriculture as 
is given by most persons to their main occupation. 
His two extensive farms at Franklin and Marshfield, 
the former the much loved place of his birth, the 
latter the scarcely less favored resort of which he 
became possessed in middle life, were carried on under 
his immediate superintendence, — not the nominal 
supervision of amateur agriculturists, leaving every 
thing, great and small, to a foreman ; but a minute 
and intelligent supervision given to particulars, to 
the work of every week, and where it was possible 
every day; when at home by actual direction, and 
when absent by regular and detailed correspondence. 
In the large mass of Mr. Webster's letters, there is 
no subject more frequently treated or with greater 
interest than this, in his correspondence with his 
foremen and others in relation to his farms. Brought 
up on a New England farm, he knew something from 
the associations of his early days of old-fashioned 
husbandry; and in later life, observation, experi- 



30 



ment, and books had kept him up with the current 
of all the recent improvements. 

"With every department of husbandry, — the quali- 
ties of the soil, the great art of enriching it, to 
which modern chemistry has given such extension ; 
the succession of crops and their comparative adapta- 
tion to our soil and climate; the varieties of ani- 
mals, and their preference for draft, flesh, and the 
dairy; the construction and use of agricultural im- 
plements, — with all these subjects, in all their 
branches and details, he appeared to me as familiar 
as with the elementary principles of his profession. 
His knowledge of them was practical as well as 
theoretical, derived in part from experience, and 
actually applied by him in the management of his 
own farms. He had an especial fondness for fine 
live stock, and possessed admirable specimens of it, 
European and American. This taste never deserted 
him. On one of the last days of his life, he caused 
himself to be moved to a favorite bay-window, 
and after he had been employed with his friend 
and secretary (Mr. G. J. Abbot) in dictating a part 
of his will, he directed three favorite yoke of 
Styrian oxen to be driven up to his window, and 
having entered into a particular description of their 
age, breed, and history, gave directions for their being 
weighed and measured the following day. No sub- 
ject attracted more of his attention in England 
than farming. The only public speech made by 
him in that country, of which a report has been 
preserved, was that made at the meeting of the 
Royal Agricultural Society at Oxford. His first 



31 



public address on his return to this country, delivered 
in the State House in Boston, contained the results 
of his observations on the agriculture of England.* 
Many of you, my friends, must have heard Mr. "Web- 
ster converse on agricultural topics. I recollect on 
one occasion to have heard him explain the condi- 
tions which determine the limits within which the 
various cereal grains can be cultivated to advantage 
in Europe and America ; unfolding the doctrine of 
isothermal lines, in connection with the various 
grains, some of which require a long summer and 
some a hot summer. His remarks on this subject, 
evidently thrown off without premeditation, would 
have enriched the pages of a scientific journal. 
On another occasion I remember to have heard him 
state with precision the descent of a favorite native 
breed of horses, with all the characteristic points of 
a good animal; and on another, the question relative 
to the indigenous origin of Indian corn. I name these 
familiar instances, which now occur to me, among the 
recollections of the social board. Several of you, 
my friends, could greatly enlarge the list- 
In fact, whether as a citizen, a patriot, or a practi- 
cal philosopher, Mr. Webster's mind was powerfully 
drawn to agriculture. Could he have chosen his 
precise position in life, I think it would have been 
that of an extensive landholder, conducting the ope- 
rations of a large farm. At Oxford he said — " What- 
ever else may tend to enrich and beautify society, that 
which feeds and clothes comfortably the mass of man- 

* Works, Vol. I., 435, 443. 



32 



kind should always be regarded as the great foun- 
dation of national prosperity." In the beginning of 
that address in the State House, to which I have 
referred, he said — "I regard agriculture as the 
leading interest of society. * * * I have been 
familiar with its operations from my youth, and I have 
always looked upon the subject with a lively and deep 
interest," At the meeting of the Norfolk Agricul- 
tural Society, at Dedham, (which Mr. Harvey recol- 
lects,) he called agriculture " the main pursuit of 
life." Weighty words from such a source ! "What 
Mr. Webster considered " the leading interest of 
society" and " the great foundation of national pros- 
perity" might well occupy his time, his thoughts, and 
his profound attention. Before popular bodies he 
spoke of it in its economical relations; but in nar- 
rower circles and on proper occasions he delighted 
to dwell on its sublime philosophy. 

And what worthier theme, my friends, can occupy 
the most exalted intellect; what subject is so well 
calculated to task the highest powers of thought 1 
Where in the natural world do we come so near 
the traces of that ineffable Power, which, in the 
great economy of vegetation, hangs orchard and 
grove and forest with the pompous drapery of May, 
and strips them to their shivering branches in No- 
vember ; which lays out universal nature as we now 
behold her, cold and fair, in this great winding- 
sheet of snow, not to sleep the sleep of death, but 
to waken her again by the concert of birds and 
warbling brooks and the soft breezes of spring; 
and which, when man cries to Heaven for his daily 






33 



bread, instead of giving him a stone, smites the mar- 
ble clods of winter all round the globe with his 
creative wand, and bids them bring forth grass for the 
cattle and herb for the service of man, and wine 
that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil that 
causeth his face to shine, and bread which strengthen- 
eth the heart of man. 

I meant, gentlemen, to have said a word of the de- 
light taken by Mr. Webster in the healthful and 
invigorating sports of the forest, the field, and the sea ; 
with what keenness and success he followed them, 
how well he understood them. In these he found his 
favorite relaxation from the anxieties of office, and the 
labors of his profession. They were to him a diver- 
sion, in the proper sense of the word. They diverted, 
turned away, his mind from the great cares of life, and 
furnished him an exhilarating occupation, which, with- 
out mental strain, stimulated and refreshed his intel- 
lectual powers. To these sports he brought all the 
science and mastery which their nature admits. An 
apt pupil in the school of old Izaac Walton, he 
was entirely familiar with the angler's curious lore. 
The different kinds of fish that fill our waters — 
their habits, their resorts, their seasons, their rela- 
tions to each other ; the birds which frequent our 
shores, marshes, and uplands, with every variety of 
larger game, had been subjected by him to accu- 
rate investigation, particularly in reference to their 
points of resemblance to their European congeners. 
It was not easy to ask him a question upon any topic 
of this kind, to which a satisfactory reply was not 
ready. 

5 . 



34 



I hope, my friends, you will not think I am dwel- 
ling on trifles. You all know how deeply the taste 
for these manly sports entered into Mr. Webster's 
character. The Americans, as a people, at least 
the professional and mercantile classes, and the other 
inhabitants of the large towns, have too little con- 
sidered the importance of healthful, generous recrea- 
tion. They have not learned the lesson contained 
in the very word, which teaches that the worn out 
man is re-created, made over again, by the season- 
able relaxation of the strained faculties. The father 
of history tells us of an old king of Egypt, Ama- 
sis by name, who used to get up early in the 
morning, ( but not earlier than Mr. Webster,) des- 
patch the business, and issue the orders of the day, 
and spend the rest of the time with his friends, in 
conviviality and amusement. Some of the aged coun- 
sellors were scandalized, and strove by remonstrance 
to make him give up this mode of life. But No, 
said he, as the bow always bent will at last break, 
so the man, forever on the strain of thought and 
action, will at last go mad or break down. You 
will find this in the second book of Herodotus, 
in the one hundred and seventy-third section. 
Thrown upon a new continent, — eager to do the 
work of twenty centuries in two, the Anglo-Ameri- 
can population has over-worked and is daily over- 
working itself. From morning to night, from 
January to December, brain and hands, eyes and 
fingers, — the powers of the body and the powers 
of the mind, are kept in spasmodic, merciless activity. 
There is no lack of a few tasteless and soulless 



35 



dissipations which are called amusements, but noble, 
athletic sports, manly out-door exercises, which 
strengthen the mind by strengthening the body, are 
too little cultivated in town or country. 

Let me not conclude, my friends, without speak- 
ing of a still more endearing aspect of Mr. Web- 
ster's character, I mean the warmth and strength of 
his kindly natural affections. The great sympathies 
of a true generous spirit were as strongly developed 
in him as the muscular powers of his frame or the 
capacities of his mighty intellect. In all the gentle 
humanities of life he had the tenderness of a 
woman. He honored his parents, he loved brother 
and sister and wife and child, he cherished kinsman, 
friend and neighbour, the companions of boyhood, 
townsman, aged school-master, humble dependant, 
faithful servant, and cultivated all the other kindly in- 
stincts, if others there be, with the same steadiness, 
warmth and energy of soul with which he pursued 
the great material objects of life. Mere social com- 
placency may have a selfish basis, but Mr. Webster's 
heart was " full of great love." * Religious convic- 
tion is an act of the understanding, but he bowed to 
the Infinite with the submissiveness of a child. 
With what tenderness he contemplated the place of 
his birth ; how fondly he pointed to the site of the 
humble cottage where he first drew the breath of 
life ; how he valued the paternal trees that shaded 
it ; how his heart melted through life at the thought 
of the sacrifices made by his aged parent, — the hard 
working veteran of two wars, — to procure him an 

* Spenser. 



36 



education; how he himself toiled till midnight with 
his pen in the least intellectual employment to secure 
that advantage to his older brother ; how he cher- 
ished the fond sympathies of husband and father, 
how he sorrowed over the departed ; how he planted 
his grief, if I may say so, in the soil of Marsh- 
field, in designating the trees by the names of his 
beloved son and daughter ; how beautiful the dedica- 
tions in which he has consigned his friendships and 
his loves to immortality ; how sublime and touching 
the pathos of his last farewells ; how saint-like the 
meditations of his departing spirit ; — how can I 
attempt to do justice to topics like these, whose 
sacredness shrinks from the most distant approach 
to public discussion! These were the pure fountains 
from which he drew T not merely the beauty but the 
force of his character, every faculty of his mind and 
every purpose of his will, deriving new strength and 
fervor from the warmth of his heart. 

But some one may ask, is this bright picture, like 
the portraits of Queen Elizabeth, without a shade ; 
were there no spots upon the disc of this meridian 
sun? Was he at length 

" That faultless monster which the world ne'er saw," 

or did he partake the infirmities of our common hu- 
manity ? Did this great intellectual, emotional, and 
physical organization, amidst the strong action and 
reaction of its vast energies, its intense conscious- 
ness of power, its soaring aspirations, its hard 
struggles with fortune in early life, its vehement 
antagonisms of a later period, the exhilarations of 



37 



triumph, the lassitude of exertion, did it never, under 
the urgent pressure of the interests, the passions, the 
exigencies of the hour, diverge in the slightest degree 
from the golden mean, in which cloistered philoso- 
phy places absolute moral perfection X To this ques- 
tion, which no one has a right to put but an angel, 
whose serene vision no mote distempers ; to which no 
one will expect a negative answer, but a Pharisee, 
with a beam in his eye big enough for the cross- 
tree of a synagogue, I make no response. I confine 
myself to two reflections : first, that, while contem- 
porary merit is for the most part grudgingly esti- 
mated, the faults of very great men, placed as they 
are upon an eminence where nothing can be con- 
cealed, and objects of the most scrutinizing hostility, 
personal and political, are like the spots on the sun, 
to which I have compared them, seen for the most 
part through telescopes that magnify a hundred, a 
thousand times ; and second, that in reference to 
questions that strongly excite the public mind, the 
imputed error is as likely to be on the side of the 
observer as of the observed. We learn from the 
Earl of Rosse, that the most difficult problem in 
practical science is to construct a lens which will 
not distort the body it reflects. The slightest aber- 
ration from the true curve of the specular mirror is 
enough to quench the fires of Sirius and break the 
club of Hercules. The motives and conduct, the 
principles and the characters of men buried deep 
in the heart, are not less likely to be mistaken 
than the lines and angles of material bodies. The 
uncharitableness of individuals and parties will 



38 



sometimes confound a defect in the glass with a 
blemish in the object. A fly hatched from a maggot 
in our own brain creeps into the tube, and straight- 
way we proclaim that there is a monster in the 
heavens, which threatens to devour the sun. 

Such, my friends, most inadequately sketched, 
in some of his private and personal relations, was 
Mr. Webster; not the jurist, not the senator, not 
the statesman, not the orator, but the man ; and 
when you add to these amiable personal traits, 
of which I have endeavored to enliven your recol- 
lections, the remembrance of what he was in those 
great public capacities, on which I have purposely 
omitted to dwell, but which it has tasked the 
highest surviving talent to describe, may we not 
fairly say that, in many respects, he stood without 
an equal among the men of his day and genera- 
tion ? Besides his noble presence and majestic coun- 
tenance, in how many points, and those of what 
versatile excellence, he towered above his fellows ! 
If you desired only a companion for an idle hour, 
a summers drive, an evening ramble, whose plea- 
sant conversation would charm the way, was there 
a man living you would sooner have sought than 
him ? But if, on the other hand, you wished to be 
resolved on the most difficult point of constitu- 
tional jurisprudence or public law, to whom would 
you have propounded it sooner than to him'? If 
you desired a guest for the festive circle, whose very 
presence, when ceremony is dropped and care ban- 
ished, gave life and cheerfulness to the board, would 
not your thought, while he was with us, have turned 



39 



to him] if your life, your fortune, your good 
name were in peril ; or you wished for a voice of 
patriotic exhortation to ring through the land ; or 
if the great interests of the country were to be 
explained and vindicated in the senate or the cabi- 
net; or if the welfare of our beloved native land, 
the union of the States, peace or war with foreign 
powers, all that is dear or important for yourselves 
and your children were at stake, did there live the 
man, nay, did there ever live the man, with whose 
intellect to conceive, whose energy to enforce, whose 
voice to proclaim the right, you would have rested 
so secure'? Finally, if, through the "cloud" of party 
opposition, sectional prejudice, personal "detraction," 
and the military availabilities which catch the dazzled 
fancies of men, he could have " ploughed his way," 
at the meridian of his life and the maturity of his 
faculties, to that position which his talents, his 
patriotism, and his public services so highly merited, 
is there a fail' man of any party, who, standing by 
his honored grave, will not admit that, beyond all 
question, he would have administered the government 
with a dignity, a wisdom, and a fidelity to the Consti- 
tution, not surpassed since the days of Washington % 

Two days before the decease of Daniel Webster, 
a gentle and thoughtful spirit touched to the finest is- 
sues, ( Rev. Dr. Frothingham,) who knew and revered 
him, as who that truly knew him did not, contem- 
plating the setting sun as he " shed his parting 
smile" on the mellow skies of October, and antici- 
pating that a brighter sun was soon to set, which 
could rise no more on earth, gave utterance to his 



40 



emotions in a chaste and elevated strain, which I am 
sure expresses the feelings of all present : 

" Sink, thou autumnal sun ! 
The trees will miss the radiance of thine eye, 
Clad in their Joseph-coat of many a dye, 
The clouds will miss thee in the fading sky : 
But now in other climes thy race must run, 

This day of glory done. 

"Sink, thou of nobler light ! 
The land will mourn thee in its darkling hour, 
Its heavens grow gray at thy retiring power, 
Thou shining orb of mind, thou beacon-tower ! 
Be thy great memory still a guardian might 

When thou art gone from sight." 

This speech was frequently interrupted by applause, 
hearty and prolonged. At the close, the whole com- 
pany rose, and cheered three times round. After a 
pause, Mr. Everett rose and said : 

" Gentlemen ; It is with the greatest concern that 
I am obliged to state to you that we shall not be 
favored this evening with the company of one to whom 
you would have been so delighted to listen, I mean 
the Honorable Rufus Choate. It was his intention, 
until the last moment, to favor us with his presence 
— hut he is severely ill, and unable to leave his resi- 
dence. He has sent his deep regrets to the company ; 
and he has sent, also, what you will listen to with the 
greatest satisfaction, and that is a toast to the memory 
of Daniel AVkbster, which I ask you now to drink 
with inc. Allow me to give it from the paper sent 
by Mr. Choate: 



41 



1 The Memory of Mr. Webster — Dearer and more honored 
on every return of his Birthday, it will survive, and it can 
perish only with the Constitution and the Union — may they 
partake one immortality ! ' " 

Speech of the Hon. George S. Hillard. 

Mr. President, — I wish that it had been my lot to 
follow some other man. " Who is he that cometh 
after a king V I wish, too, that it had been my lot 
to represent some other man. To follow you, Mr. 
President, and to represent Mr. Choate, is a double 
burden too great for human shoulders to bear. I 
am sure that all who are present will feel with me 
that in this glittering circlet there is an empty socket, 
where Choate should be, but is not — that in this 
constellation there is an absent, not a lost, Pleiad 
whose light seems the brighter from its not being 
visible to the eye of sense. 

Let me first express the regret which I feel — which 
we all feel — in the absence of our distinguished 
friend ; and let me crave your indulgence while I 
read a note from him, explaining the reasons why he 
cannot be with us : 

" My Dear Harvey, — I have struggled till this hour 
in the hope of being with you. All is over now, and 
I am in for a night of solitude and sickness. Let me 
have your sympathy that I cannot join this noble 
circle of Mr. Webster's steadfast friends. Sympathize 
with me especially that I cannot hear the most elo- 
quent of the living do such honor and justice as he 
alone can do to the most beloved of the recent 
dead. Let us all stand engaged to observe this an- 

6 



42 



nual commemoration as a service not more of per- 
sonal affection than public duty. 

Your obedient servant, 
4 p. m. Rufus Choate." 

In rising to address you, I cannot entirely shake 
off a feeling of constraint, almost of embarrassment, 
arising from the contrast between the actual scene 
of festivity around us and the occasion which has 
given birth to it. All that meets the eye is sug- 
gestive of gay and joyous emotions. These brilliant 
lights — these delicate flowers — these graceful orna- 
ments — this festive board — breathe the spirit of 
light-hearted enjoyment. They are consonant with 
that mood of mind in which the " bosom's lord sits 
light upon his throne," and the heart is thrown open 
to the entrance of airy and smiling fancies. But 
the occasion is of another mood. It is solemn and 
impressive ; darkened with thoughts of mortality and 
overshadowed with a fresh sadness. Our loss is recent, 
and our sorrow is not yet mellowed by time. The 
admirers of Mr. Pitt, I believe, sometimes meet to 
commemorate the day of his birth ; but to them Mr. 
Pitt is but a name and a symbol. But Mr. Webster 
does not lie so far in the past as to have become 
a purely historical personage. Ours is a personal 
loss and our grief has the sharpness and sting of a 
personal bereavement. "We have seen his magnifi- 
cent presence ; we have heard his impressive voice ; 
we have felt the pressure of his hand. The image 
of the man seems to brood over the whole scene. 
We have read stories of shadowy visitants, and of 
phantom guests that glide in on noiseless feet and 



43 



mingle in festive scenes. I have been conscious this 
evening of the mysterious presence of an unseen 
power — have seen the light of those dark eyes, and 
felt the shadow of that majestic brow. 

The life of a man like Mr. Webster readily divides 
itself into two portions, his public and his private life. 
His public life is part of the history of the country ; 
it is known to all men ; and his friends calmly wait 
for the unbiassed judgment of the future upon his 
acts and his motives. But in his private life, much of 
which was only revealed to the friends who shared 
his closest confidence, there is abundant matter for 
meditation ; and it appropriately supplies themes for 
us this evening. The world saw in Mr. Webster a 
great statesman, patriot, and orator ; but many who 
sit around this board knew that in that large and 
imperial nature there were secluded regions into 
which the public did not enter, but which were full 
of attraction to those who were thus privileged. 
Trace the private life of Mr. Webster from its source 
in the woods of New Hampshire to its close at Marsh- 
field — view him as a son, a brother, a husband, a 
father, a friend — and we see that each portion of it 
is linked by natural laws to what preceded and what 
followed. His whole being obeyed a natural and 
progressive law of development: in the present, at 
any moment, there were vital threads linking it to 

the past. 

There were two elements, especially, that entered 
largely into the composition of Mr. Webster's nature ; 
the strength and depth of his domestic affections and 
his love of nature and love of the soil. Without 



44 



going so far as the Athenians, who required the 
professional orators who discussed the matters laid 
before their popular assemblies to be married men 
and owners of landed property, it is certainly safe to 
to say that these two elements contribute in no small 
measure to the worth and the value of a states- 
man. Compare Mr. Webster in these respects with 
those three great contemporaneous lights of English 
history, Burke, Fox, and Pitt. The only one of 
the three between whom and Mr. Webster, in these 
points, the parallel runs perfect is Burke. He was 
a lover of nature and a lover of agriculture. He 
was also a man of deep and strong domestic affec- 
tions, as the pathos of those passages in his writ- 
ings in which he speaks of the death of his son so 
well proves. No one who has read the writings of 
this great man can fail to recognize how much these 
traits of his contributed to their power and their 
enduring excellence. Pitt was a solitary man, with 
no warm affections ; with little love for any thing 
but power, and little taste for any thing but busi- 
ness. The secret of his immense influence over his 
contemporaries seems to have been in his immense 
strength of will and in his power of cold, wither- 
ing sarcasm ; which pierced and penetrated but never 
warmed. The element of sympathy was not in him ; 
nor were those instinctive perceptions and capacities 
which flow from it. Can any one doubt that he 
would have been not merely a happier man, but a 
better statesman, if he had a wife and children 
around him, and if he had had his father's taste 
for planting and gardening. The life of Fox, as 



45 



we all know, was for many years one of indul- 
gence, and he at length married a woman whom he 
might love but could hardly respect. But he was a 
childless man. He, however, had one taste in common 
with Mr. AVebster: he was a lover of nature; and 
never appeared to more advantage than in his 
charming retreat of St. Anne's Hill, where he might 
be seen, as one of his friends described him, " loung- 
ing about the garden with a book in his hand, 
watching the birds as they stole his cherries." 

The life of Mr. Webster was an eminently New 
England life. It was made up of elements drawn 
from the soil and institutions of New England, and 
which could have been derived from no other source ; 
and not only that, but from the soil and institu- 
tions of New England as they were fifty or sixty 
years ago. The child of to-day — the future Webster 
— born under corresponding circumstances, cannot 
have the same elements flow into his life, because 
New England is not now what it was then. Great 
changes have taken 'place during the last half 
century. Mr. Webster and his contemporaries, the 
strong men that came from the woods of New Hamp- 
shire and Vermont, seem to me a race of intellectual 
Scandinavians, that swarmed out from the frozen 
North, to reap the harvests of opportunity and pluck 
the clusters of success, in more genial fields. 

There is a poem of Tennyson's which always seemed 
to me to have a peculiar application to Mr. Webster's 
life and fortunes. With your permission I will read 
it, as it is not long : 



46 



Dost thou look back on what has been, 
As some divinely gifted man, 
Whose life in low estate began, 
And on a simple village green ; 

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 
And grasps the skirts of happy chance 
And breasts the blows of circumstance, 
And grapples with his evil star ; 

Who makes by force his merit known, 
And lives to clutch the golden keys 
To mould a mighty state's decrees, 
And shape the whisper of the throne ; 

And moving up from high to higher, 
Becomes on fortune's crowning slope 
The pillar of a people's hope, 
The centre of a world's desire ; 

Yet feels as in a pensive dream, 
When all his active powers are still, 
A distant dearness in the hill, 
A secret sweetness in the stream ; 

The limit of his narrower fate, 
While yet beside its vocal springs, 
He played at Counsellors and Kings 
With one that was his earliest mate; 

Who ploughs with pain his native lea, 
And reaps the labor of his hands; 
And in the furrow musing stands — 
Does my old friend remember me 1 

In reflecting upon Mr. Webster's fame and for- 
tunes, the pictures and reflections of this poem have 
more than once recurred to me. He had early com- 



47 



panions and friends — rivals at the village school, and 
sharers in his boyish sports — with whom he talked 
of his future hopes and unformed plans — and whose 
life was passed in modest obscurity, while his arose 
to such glittering heights of renown and success. I 
can fancy one of these boyish friends gathering his 
family around him of a winter's evening, and reading 
aloud one of the great senator's speeches, and telling 
his children how he once sat upon the same bench 
with the orator, and then, dropping his paper upon 
his knees and asking himself the question : " I won- 
der if Daniel "Webster remembers me % " We may be 
assured that Mr. Webster did remember the friends 
of his boyhood ; for one of his most marked traits 
was his susceptibility to all those impressions which 
ran back to the opening dawn of his life. That 
chord in him was never touched without vibrating 
sweet sounds. 

Mr. President, we are here to-night, called to- 
gether by a sentiment of admiration for a great man, 
who did the state some service in his day. I hold 
this sentiment to be an honorable feeling, worthy of 
commendation and encouragement. Greatness is a 
gift of God, to be gratefully received and acknow- 
ledged ; but some portion of that feeling which great- 
ness itself inspires is due to a genuine and unselfish 
admiration of greatness. Nor is sincere and disinter- 
ested admiration for greatness so very common a 
thing. We owe to it, however, one of the most de- 
lightful books in the English language— Boswell's 
Life of Johnson. Every body reads this book, but 
most persons rise from its perusal with a feeling of 



48 



something like contempt for the author. We think 
he was rather a poor creature, who was willing 
to fawn upon Johnson and endure such indignities 
at his rough hands. But I think Carlyle took a 
truer and more generous view of the relation be- 
tween them. He said that the admiration of Bos- 
well — a gentleman born — for the intellectual great- 
ness of the low-born Johnson was an estimable and 
even admirable trait, and that it raised him above 
the vulgar prejudices of his class and rank. Bos- 
well's father, Lord Auchinleck, was a respectable 
Scotch judge, a whig and a Presbyterian ; but he was 
full of the pride of birth and the pride of station, 
and he looked down upon Johnson as a plebeian ad- 
venturer. He called him " a dominie, that kept a 
school, and called it an academy." In my judgment 
Boswell's genuine and unselfish admiration of John- 
son was a higher and nobler trait than the fathers 
contempt for him, and that so far the former is set 
above the latter. Allow me, then, in bringing these 
remarks to a close, to condense what I have been 
saying into a sentiment : — Great men, the jewels of 
God — It is man's duty so to set them, that their 
light may shine before the world. 

President Everett. — Our friend, (Mr. Hillard,) 
who has just taken his seat, has read a beautiful 
little poem of Tennyson's. It reminds me of an in- 
cident that occurred on one occasion when I hap- 
pened to be at the Grand Opera of Naples. There 
was present a member of the British royal family, and 
out of compliment to him the band struck up " God 



49 



save the King." It happened that there were several 
American sailors in the house at the time, and after 
the band had got through with " God save the 
King," one of those jolly and true-hearted Ameri- 
can tars cried out, in English, somewhat to the 
amazement of the Italians, who heard the stento- 
rian cry from the gallery, without exactly knowing 
what it meant : — " You have played ' God save the 
King;' now give us « Hail Columbia ! ' (Laughter.) 
My friend Hillard has given us a very beautiful ex- 
tract from Tennyson, but our good friend Dr. 
Holmes is among the company, and I am willing 
to pit him against the poet laureate, Tennyson, or 
anybody else. Mr. Hillard has given us Tennyson ; 
now, I say, let us have Dr. Holmes. (Applause.) 

The Poem of Dr. Holmes. 

The band having played " Hail Columbia ! " Dr. 
Holmes rose amid cheers, and delivered the following 
poem with his characteristic excellence of manner, 
and was repeatedly cheered as he proceeded : 

When life hath run its largest round 

Of toil and triumph, joy and wo, 
How brief a storied page is found 

To compass all its outward show ! 

The world-tried sailor tires and droops ; 

His flag is dust, his keel forgot ; 
His farthest voyages seem but loops 

That float from life's entangled knot. 

But when within the narrow space 
Some larger soul hath lived and wrought, 

7 



50 



Whose sight was open to embrace 

The boundless realms of deed and thought 

When stricken by the freezing blast, 

A nation's living pillars fall, 
How rich the storied page, how vast, 

A word, a whisper can recall ! 

No medal lifts its fretted face, 

Nor speaking marble cheats your eye, 

Yet while these pictured lines I trace, 
A living image passes by; 

A roof beneath the mountain pines ; 

The cloisters of a hill-girt plain ; 
The front of life's embattled lines ; 

A mound beside the heaving main. 

These are the scenes ; a boy appears ; 

Let life's round dial in the sun 
Count the swift arc of seventy years, 

His frame is dust ; his task is done. 

Yet pause upon the noontide hour, 

Ere the declining sun has laid 
His bleaching rays on manhood's power, 

And look upon the mighty shade. 

No gloom that stately shape can hide, 
No change uncrown its brow; behold ! 

Dark, calm, large-fronted, lightning-eyed; 
Earth has no double from its mould ! 

Ere from the fields by valor won 
The battle-smoke had rolled away, 

And bared the blood-red setting sun, 
His eyes were opened on the day. 



51 



His land was but a shelving strip, 

Black with the strife that made it free ; 

He lived to see its banners dip 
Their fringes in the western sea. 

The boundless prairies learned his name, 
His words the mountain echoes knew, 

The northern breezes swept his fame 
From icy lake to warm bayou. 

In toil he lived ; in peace he died ; 

When life's full cycle was complete, 
Put off his robes of power and pride 

And laid them at his Master's feet. 

His rest is by the storm-swept waves 
Whom life's wild tempests roughly tried, 

Whose heart was like the streaming caves 
Of ocean, throbbing at his side. 

Death's cold, white hand is like the snow 

Laid softly on the furrowed hill, 
It hides the broken seams below, 

And leaves its glories brighter still. 

In vain the envious tongue upbraids ; 

His name a nation's heart shall keep 
Till morning's latest sunlight fades 

On the blue tablet of the deep ! 

Mr. Everett. I think you will agree with me that 
" Hail Columbia" is about as good, this evening, as 
" God save the King," [Cheers.] 

There are many gentlemen present, both natives of 
this and of other states, upon whom the Chair would 
be most happy to call — the only difficulty being that 
it is impossible to listen to more than one gentleman 



52 

at the same time. [Laughter.] The Chair is happy 
to be informed that there is a gentleman present who 
unites, to some extent, both capacities — a native of 
Massachusetts and of Cape Cod, a friend of Mr. Web- 
ster in earlier days, and a distinguished citizen of 
New York, who has afforded us some encouragement 
to hope that we shall have the pleasure of hearing 
from him this evening. If General Nye is within the 
sound of my voice, he will please come forward. 

General Nye obeyed the summons, and spoke as 
follows : 

Speech of General Nye of New York. 

Mr. President and gentlemen, — I hardly know 
where to lay the blame of this infliction upon you. 
I mistrust my friend here [Peter Harvey, Esq.] and 
this friend [Hon. George Ashmun] that they have 
been instrumental in inflicting upon you, for a mo- 
ment, a small speech from me. [Laughter.] 

It is true, Mr. President, my feet first made tracks 
upon the sands of Cape Cod; but long ago, sir, 
— away back in the pathway of time, — a good mo- 
ther, to keep me from the sea, that the great man 
whose memory you have met to-night to commemo- 
rate loved so well, found her way to the central 
part of New York, — upon an eminence, sir, that 
New Englanders always find, of 11,000 feet above 
tide water. I feel, sir, a strong presentiment that 
you have been imposed upon in introducing me 
as a " distinguished gentleman from the state of 
New York." [Laughter.] I have no distinguishing 



53 



element in my character but a love for my native 
state, a love for the citizens of that state, and for 
the citizens of the state of my adoption, and of my 
country. [Applause.] But, sir, I am going to at- 
tempt to rob Massachusetts of some of the laurels she 
claims in the character of the distinguished man 
whose birthday you have met to commemorate. 
He belonged not to Massachusetts. He was not 
born within your borders. [Applause, and cries of 
" Good ! " He was born upon the rocks of New 
Hampshire, — a foundation as firm and unchanging as 
the character he bore. [Renewed applause.] He was 
not the property of Massachusetts — he belonged to 
the nation, — nay, he had a wider field, — he be- 
longed to the world. [Enthusiastic cheering.] 

Sir, my heart pulsated with youthful emotions as 
you spoke of the speech of speeches delivered by 
Mr. Webster in the contest upon constitutional rights 
with the most gallant son of the South. My youth- 
ful ear drank in that speech ; and I see before me 
to-night, passing in beautiful panoramic view, the 
whole of that mighty and impressive scene. I saw 
the gallant Hayne, whose lips were touched by a 
live coal from the altar of eloquence, but I beheld 
him overthrown with one blast from the bugle horn 
of constitutional freedom. [Loud applause.] Sir, 
New York shares in the honor and the imperishable 
glory of Daniel Webster, and the far-off state that 
laves its feet in the waters of the Pacific shares in the 
honor and the fame of Webster. It remained for 
nim to show the true basis upon which Constitutional 
freedom rested ; and when this country was rocked to 



54 



its centre, when excitement had taken the place of 
reason, it was his majestic form, it was his command- 
ing voice that said to the waters — " Peace, be still ! " 
[Loud cheers.] Therefore, Mr. President, I am un- 
willing that Massachusetts alone should appropriate 
the honor and the glory of Webster. He was the 
nation's property ; and in that view, I do not feel 
exactly as though I was an interloper, although 
from another state, in appearing here on this occa- 
sion. [Applause.] 

There is one thing, sir, that perhaps I ought to 
say. I never agreed with Mr. Webster politically. 
It is strange that a man of such might should not 
have been able to controul me — one so weak ; but 
I was educated differently by a Democratic New 
England mother. [Cheers.] But never, never was 
there a moment when, if my vote would have eleva- 
ted that man to the Chief Magistracy of the nation, that 
he would not have had it. [Prolonged cheering.] 

Mr. President, perhaps I ought to stop here. [" Go 
on — go on !" ] I share in the sentiment of admira- 
tion for Mr. Webster that has gathered this assembly 
together. I know that in his inmost heart the Union 
and the liberty of this country were the objects that 
he most fondly cherished. [Loud applause.] Sir, I, 
too, love the Union of my country, — I look to it as 
he did, as the harbinger to the peace, happiness, and 
prosperity of my country. The Union, sir, will ever 
exist. It is cemented to its centre by revolutionary 
blood. (Cheers.) It is bound around by the affec- 
tions of twenty millions of freemen, and it is ade- 
quate, and will be, to the exigencies that now exist 



55 



or may hereafter arise. (Loud applause.) Sir, if 
there is a place on earth that should bend all its 
energies to preserve the Union, it is Boston. That 
mighty spire that stands here in sight rests upon 
revolutionary bones. Here in Boston was the first 
revolutionary blood spilt ; — the inscription was made 
here, the quit-claim was written at Yorktown. (Great 
cheering.) It was written, Mr. President, in the best 
blood of our Revolutionary fathers. Let the waves 
of excitement dash and break, let them scatter their 
spray on every hand, yet, like the rock on a serf- 
beaten coast, this Union will stand. (Enthusiastic 
applause.) 

Sir, I was an admirer of the character of Daniel 
Webster. I remember with youthful emotion the 
time when I used to sail in his little bark upon 
the sea you have said he loved so well; and I have 
now a bright silver dollar that he gave me the day I 
was eleven years old. (Applause.) I have told my 
wife not to be dismayed at all at the thought of 
coming to want — I should never be out of money. 
(Laughter.) The dollar shall abide with me until 
time shall be, to me, no more. (Applause.) It is, 
sir, the anchor of my financial ship. I have often 
been reduced to that, but I have never yet been 
obliged to let it go. (Cheers.) I drank in, as the 
youthful ear will always drink in, the accents of 
wisdom, many of the sayings of that wise man, which 
I shall never forget. Sir, he was a boy. He could 
accommodate himself to the capacity of a boy, and 
made himself perfectly familiar with the unlettered 
oarsman that plied at the oar as he directed. That 



56 



is no evidence that he was not a man — is itl 
Boyhood and youth are the foundation of manhood, 
and he had that foundation deeply laid ; and what 
a beautiful superstructure did he rear upon it! 
(Loud applause.) Sir, it is a custom that has the 
sanction of ages for men to meet in commemoration 
of the birth of distinguished men ; and I rejoice to 
see here, the home and hearthstone of Webster, that 
you meet to commemorate the birthday of a man that 
fills a larger space in the civil history of our coun- 
try than any man, living or dead. (Prolonged 
cheering.) Hail, then, Massachusetts, that you were 
the abiding-place of a Webster ! I greet you here, 
and rejoice with you that you shared so largely in 
the glory and honor of his services and his name ! 
(Great applause.) 

Sir, I want to say one thing more — if I may be 
excused. I have sometimes thought that Massachu- 
setts, as Massachusetts, was a little ungrateful to the 
memory of this great man. Sir, if Massachusetts 
should strike a balance in her account with the 
lamented Webster, she would owe him countless 
millions. (Loud and prolonged cheering.) Let 
Massachusetts, sir, come here to-night, and lay her 
treasures before you, and he has earned them all. 
(Renewed cheering.) 

A Voice. Massachusetts will pay. 

General Nye. Massachusetts ought to pay ! (Ap- 
plause.) Sir, I have been a little gratified that I 
left Massachusetts before she passed these criticisms 
upon Daniel Webster. " Nothing beautiful but truth," 
is the Spanish proverb. (" Good ! ") 



57 



Mr. President, it is unfair that I should have been 
called upon to address this assembly after they had 
listened to your voice, to whose Athenian tones these 
ears that were accustomed to harsher notes have lis- 
tened with delight, — it was unkind that, after the 
classic Hillard and my poetic friend Holmes, that I 
sir, who graduated at the plough handle, should be 
called in as background to complete the picture. 
(Loud laughter and applause.) But, sir, I could not 
withdraw. I hardly knew what it meant, sir, when 
my friend Ashmun called on me to-day, and with even 
more than his ordinary seductiveness, insisted upon it 
and wrung from me the promise that I would dine 
with him, and when he ushered me into the august 
presence of this assembly, and when I saw yourself in 
the position of presiding officer, I said, " Ashmun, 
save me from my friends." (Laughter.) Then, sir, 
I began to suspect what it all meant ; but I promise 
you — and I will see that that promise is fulfilled — 
that George Ashmun shall share the same mortifica- 
tion. (Laughter and applause.) 

The President. I think when our friend tells us 
he graduated at the plough handle, and contrasts his 
diploma with that of my friends Hillard and Holmes, 
myself and the rest of us who went to college, he 
but furnishes another proof of the justness of the 
idea to which I have before alluded, that Mr. Web- 
ster was sent to college, in the opinion of some per- 
sons, because he was not good for anything else. 
(Laughter.) I do not see what the use of going to 
college is. (Kenewed merriment.) The gentleman 
8 



58 



tells us that he is not a " distinguished citizen" of 
New York. If that is the case, I say, so much the 
worse for New York. (Laughter and applause.) 
However, gentlemen, I can assure our friend, Gen- 
eral Nye, that I will take care to carry into effect 
his plot against Mr. Ashmun before I have done with 
him. In the mean time the respect that is due to 
gentlemen from other states requires me not to forget 
that we have here a distinguished citizen from Ohio 
— a gentleman who well knew Mr. Webster and ho- 
nored and loved him. Allow me to introduce to you 
the Hon. R. H. Schenck of Ohio. 

Speech of Mr. Schenck. 

Mr. Schenck said he came to listen, and had no 
expectation that he should be called upon to take 
any part in the festivities of the occasion, further 
than to share in the general gratification of all pre- 
sent. However, as he had been called up, he would 
be doing injustice to his own feelings if he failed to 
express the deep satisfaction he had experienced in 
uniting with them in doing honor to that great man 
who has gone from among us, if he did not say 
with what more than ordinary emotion he had 
listened to the remarks of the gentlemen who had 
preceded him, and particularly to those of the Presi- 
dent, whose delineation of the character of Mr. 
Webster he alluded to as marked with an elo- 
quence so fervid, with a poetry so beautiful, that 
would make that speech one of the epics of the 
land. 



59 



Mr. Schenck said he united with his friend from 
New York in protesting against anything that should 
look like an exclusive claim on the part of New 
England to the fame of Mr. Webster. Mr. Webster 
belonged to them all ; and he could never forget, 
while Minnesota and Florida, and Massachusetts, and 
other " border" states, were claiming that Mr. Web- 
ster belonged to them, the centre of the country 
throbs also for him. He (Mr. S.) was not in this 
country when the news first went over this land 
and the wide world that Daniel Webster was 
gone. At that time he was in another hemisphere, 
partly from the act and with the assent of Mr. 
Webster himself, and perhaps that fact gave him 
an opportunity of seeing the effect upon the mind 
of this nation and the world better than those who 
made a part in the scene in which that event 
transpired. He could testify that when that sun 
went down, it shed a gloom not merely over this 
land, but a shadow was cast over the wide world. 
When people abroad spoke of this sad event, they 
did not allude to Mr. Webster as a citizen of Mas- 
sachusetts, or a native of New Hampshire, then 
lately deceased, nor as a man whose residence was 
at the North or the South, the East or the West, 
— they felt that a great American was no more. 
(Applause.) 

He would draw an illustration from the back- 
woods from whence he came. If they stood in the 
the forest, what did they see? Some giant oak 
lifting its mighty branches to the clouds, and 
bathing them in the dews of heaven; some tall 



60 



symmetrical maple, with its cone-shaped top, stretch- 
ing far np ; some cloud-reaching pine, or some hum- 
bler trees of the forest. Looking at them, they saw 
each with its individual peculiarities and character- 
istics ; but if they looked at the woods from a dis- 
tance, they saw a green and glorious forest, in which 
there is no distinguishing trees one from another. 
So it was with our Union; so may it ever be! 
May we be able to make each tree of that forest 
forever a Liberty Tree, around which we may all 
rally together ! (Prolonged cheering.) My word for 
it, said Mr. Schenck, no surer way of securing this 
sentiment in the public mind of this country can 
possibly be found, than by remembering, at all 
times, the glorious sentiments of the man whose 
birthday we are met to commemorate. (Loud ap- 
plause.) 

The President. Now, gentlemen, I rise to fulfil 
my compact with General Nye, and call upon the 
Honorable George Ashmun — a warm, devoted, able 
friend of Mr. Webster, in public and private, at all 
times, in all confpanies, on all occasions. 

Speech of Mr. Ashmun. 

Mr. Ashmun, on coming forward, was greeted 
with vociferous applause, followed by three hearty 
and unanimous cheers. He said that he had no doubt 
that whenever the President should call for a res- 
ponse from one whom he pronounced to be a faithful 



61 



friend of Mr. Webster, there would be a hearty cheer 
from such an assemblage of faithful friends as this ; 
he thanked them for that cheer ; he claimed only to 
have been a faithful friend of Mr. Webster, living 
and dead, and with that tribute from a Massachu- 
setts audience he would be content. He was faith- 
ful to him because he loved him — loved him for his 
great character, public and private, and few men, 
he would venture to say, knew that character better 
than he did. He was glad to stand here as one of 
Mr. Webster's friends, to give his testimony, feeble 
though it might be, to his memory. The President, 
in an elaborate, beautiful, artistical manner, had 
portrayed to the assembly the characteristics of that 
great man ; he (Mr. Ashmun) was not to repeat 
those words, to add to them, and he hoped not to 
diminish or weaken them; all he desired to say 
was, that among the richest recollections of his life, 
those that he cherished as the most precious were 
the recollections of the confidence and trust that that 
great man was kind enough to give to him. 

Mr. Ashmun said he was glad to add his hearty 
tribute to the homage which was offered to the great 
heart which now lay buried at Marshfield. If there 
could be anything finer or more beautiful, — if there 
could be anything in which the heart could join 
more religiously than this manifestation, let him 
hear it, and whether in the church or in the forum, 
in temple or in field, he would make a pilgrimage 
to join in it. He firmly believed that this homage 
paid to Mr. Webster on the anniversary of his birth 
was a guaranty for the safety of the nation. 



62 



In conclusion, Mr. Ashmun said he did not expect 
to be called upon to address that assembly, but he 
was never at liberty to be silent upon an occasion 
when the memory or character of Mr. Webster was 
to be considered. He had something to do with 
him, and he hoped it was not a presumptuous boast, 
both in public and private, and he would declare to 
them that there was nothing human which was 
cherished with so much reverence in his heart as the 
character of Mr. Webster. (Applause.) 

Hon. George S. Hillard here took the chair and 
said : — Our distinguished chairman, after the fatigues 
of this evening, has withdrawn, to seek that rest 
which we all feel he has so fairly earned. I think I 
do no more than express the feelings of gratitude 
that throb in the bosoms of all, when I propose as 
a sentiment — 

Edward Everett — The statesman, the orator, the patriot, 
the Elisha upon whom the mantle of our departed Elijah has 
fallen. [Loud cheers. J 

Gentlemen, it is perfectly true that, although we 
meet here merely as citizens of Boston, we, as such, 
have no right to any monopoly in the fame and 
character of Mr. Webster ; for, if there be any one 
thing that, more than another, marked that illus- 
trious man, it was the breadth and comprehen- 
siveness of his patriotism, and his scorn of every 
thing narrow, sectional, local. We have heard from 
Ohio and from New York tributes worthy of his 
greatness : I am happy to say that a nearer state, a 



63 



New England state, is here represented by a worthy 
son, who, I am sure, feels a sentiment in unison 
with the prevailing tone of this evening. I will ask 
you to give your attention when I call upon the Hon. 
H. C. Deming, Mayor of Hartford, to speak in behalf 
of Connecticut. 

Speech of the Honorable Henry C. Deming, of 

Connecticut. 

Mr. President, — Connecticut and Massachusetts 
are old allies. Civilization had scarcely planted its 
footsteps around this harbor, when you sent out a 
colony to gladden with its presence the loveliest of 
rivers and the fairest of landscapes. We come here 
from Connecticut to hail Massachusetts as our 
mother. All hail to thee, great parent of states, in 
whose waters the first puritan keel was laid — on 
whose shores the Indian first met his deity — Civili- 
zation. That civilization you dispensed to us, and 
that alliance, thus formed, has been close, uninter- 
rupted, and continual. During the long and bloody 
war with the Indians, these two states mutually as- 
sisted and protected each other against the foe, and 
through the revolution they marched, shoulder to 
shoulder, and arm in arm. 

Besides this, Massachusetts has done more for us 
still, and I cannot hear the name of "Webster, 
without remembering that, in all our interests — 
commercial, agricultural, and national — we leaned 
and fell back upon his great arm, and I devoutly 
believe that we owe it to him that we and the 



61 



sisterhood of states are still blended in a common 
harmony. Why, sir, there is no state in the Union 
where the heart, the character, and the fame of 
Daniel Webster are more closely bonnd aronnd the 
heart of the people than in Connecticut. 

We were ready to enter into any canvass when 
his name should be emblazoned on the flag ; and I 
think it becomes both Massachusetts and Connecti- 
cut, in this period of trial, to utter, not in fear but 
in hope, the great petition which closed his speech to 
Hayne — "When my eyes shall be turned to be- 
hold for the last time the sun in the heavens, may I 
not see him shining on the broken and dishonored 
fragments of a once glorious Union — on states dis- 
cordant, dissevered, belligerent — on a land rent with 
civil feuds, or drenched in fraternal blood ; but let 
their last feeble glance rather behold the gorgeous 
ensign of the republic, now known and honored 
throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its 
arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, 
not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star ob- 
scured; bearing in its motto no such interrogatory 
as ' What is all this worth \ ' or those other words 
of delusion, ' Liberty first and Union afterwards,' 
but streaming all over in characters of living light, 
blazing in all its ample folds, as they float over the 
sea and over the land, in every wind under the 
whole heaven, that other sentiment, dear to every true 
American heart, ' Liberty and Union, now and for- 
ever, one and inseparable.' " 



65 
Speech of Hon. Otis P. Lord. 

Mr. Lord said : — 

He yielded to the call upon him, — wholly unexpect- 
ed, and finding him therefore wholly unprepared, — 
mainly to express his sympathy with the universal 
sentiment of the assembly, of sincere regret, that the 
distinguished friend of Mr. Webster, (Mr. Choate,) 
who had been struggling for two days against sickness 
and disease that he might be here to-night, has at last 
been obliged to abandon his purpose. He knew how 
anxiously that gentleman hoped to be here — how he 
had made more than his accustomed preparation — 
how we all should have been delighted — even beyond 
our want — to listen to his thoughts of beauty and 
wisdom — as they dropped, or rather as they were 
cast, glittering and sparkling from his lips. Prov- 
identially, he is prevented from being here ; — and the 
company will hardly be obliged to you, sir, for making 
his absence the more painfully felt. 

Mr. Lord added, that he had hardly been personally 
acquainted with Mr. Webster; — that it was his misfor- 
tune to have had but few personal interviews with him, 
and was but little familiar with his private life ; but he 
admired and venerated him as every man who under- 
stood him, though feebly, — venerated and admired him. 
It was fitting and proper that this day should be set 
apart to do him honor. 

The Fourth of July is immortal — for on that day a 

nation was born. The Twenty-Second of February is 

immortal, for then a Washington was born — but who 

else than Webster ever immortalized by a single act 

9 



G6 



any day in the calendar? No man to-day hears the 
Seventh of March named without associating with it 
Mr. Webster and the renown of the country. 

Mr. Webster once said something like this : I speak 
Mr. Lord said, from memory — "There are those now liv- 
ing whose presence it was enough to speak of the nine- 
teenth of April, without mentioning the year " — in- 
stantly, 1775, and the battle of Lexington were brought 
to mind ; and so to-day — the mention of the seventh 
of March brings at once to mind that terrible agitation 
of public affairs which was stilled only by the oil pour- 
ed by this great statesman upon the troubled waters. 

Our president has said that there was a question 
which none but an angel might ask — but 

Fools madly rush where angels fear to tread ; 

And fools had rushed in and asked whether, after all, 
there was not a spot upon this sun. It is pretty certain 
it was not a sun if it didn't have a spot upon it. He 
had an answer to make to this question. He would 
ask this enquirer to go with him in the month of Oc- 
tober, in the year 1852, just as this great spirit was 
preparing for its flight to a better world, and witness 
the scene at Marshfield — that sublime and holy death- 
bed — and then tell him, who — after a life of three 
score years and ten — with such vastness of power of 
mind — having participated in such scenes of mighty 
effort and complete triumph — with passions commen- 
surate with that great capacity — who overlaid upon 
his couch to meditate upon his coming dissolution with 
a consciousness such as we know sustained and sup- 
ported him. Who of his maligners now could feel 



67 



more sure of His rod and His staff in their passage 
through that dark valley : — If you would know the 
very heart of hearts of a man — do not ask so much 
how he lived— but how he died. The sublimest spec- 
tacle this continent ever witnessed was the departure 
of that great soul from its earthly tabernacle — its wil- 
ling submission of itself into the secure custody of its 
Creator. 

When malignant philanthropy turned up the whites 
of its eyes in holy horror, he asked it to put its phari- 
saic finger upon the sentence in Mr. Webster's works, 
which it would obliterate. When it had attempted 
this, it had shewn itself as imbecile as it is malig- 
nant. For forty years Mr. Webster was before the 
public — for forty years he was dropping almost orac- 
ular sentences — and what scavenger has yet found that 
passage — or that sentiment in any speech, that is not 
fit to be transmitted to posterity ? Who ever, in their 
most extravagant complaint against him, have been 
able to quote the passage, to write down the words 
uttered by him that were false to freedom, or false 
to his country or false to himself? General denuncia- 
tion and general abuse were dealt out freely enough 
by small politicians and malevolent reformers, but he 
had never yet known one of them to produce the sen- 
timent uttered by Mr. Webster which any honest man 
would dare declare to be inconsistent with his own 
previous character — or hia devotion to truth, or to free- 
dom and the great interest of humanity. Often had 
he asked one and another to leave denunciation and 
come to specification — but never — never in a single 
instance — had he been able to find any reformer who 



68 



could point to any sentence and say, that is a senti- 
ment which is not consistent with a perfect devotion 
to truth and to the free institutions of his country. 

How remarkable, said Mr. Lord, is one fact. There is 
no reviler of Mr. Webster — however ultra — however 
bitter and malignant — who does not feel sure that he 
is right in any matter of political ethics, if he can find 
his opinion supported by that of Mr. Webster. With 
what eagerness is his authority seized upon — what 
consciousness of impregnibilitydoes it give ; — and yet, 
how unwisely used. Nothing with him in politics 
was merely abstract ; with those who carped at him 
every thing was abstract. His was profound wisdom 
which viewed subjects in their relations to other sub- 
jects ; — theirs a wisdom which is incapable of compass- 
ing more than one subject. Indeed all that is really 
of value in these gentlemen's speculations, they take 
from Mr. Webster himself. It is the excesses, the 
excrescences, the extremes which are theirs. He didn't 
run abstraction to these extremes — hence their 
tears. 

And why is it, that they and we have so pro- 
found a respect for him ? Not because he was great. 
Mere greatness may inspire wonder, but never respect 
or love. 

The people — the reading — intelligent — thinking- 
people of the country, loved Mr. Webster ; not so 
much because they knew him to be great, as because 
they believed him to be a good man and a true patriot. 
They loved him because they saw that the paramount 
object of his life and his efforts was to strengthen and 
perpetuate this American Union. Till within the past 



69 



quarter of a century the people of this country did not 
generally fully understand and completely comprehend 
the true theory of republican liberty. There were 
notions of Liberty and of the Confederacy of the 
States, but "our own peculiar American Liberty" the 
people at large never fully grasped till the simplicity 
of style of Mr. Webster demonstrated it. It is hardly 
true to say that the speech of Mr. Hayne was an at- 
tack upon the generally received opinions of the times. 
The notions of the people were then quite vague up- 
on the relations of the State and Federal government 
— their relative powers and rights — and though a 
mere boy at the time, Mr. Lord said he could well re- 
member seeing the great speech of Mr. Hayne printed 
upon satin, with letters of gold, as embodying the pop- 
ular doctrines of the day. The speech of Mr. Web- 
ster, in reply to that, was not at once and universally 
received as the true theory of the Constitution. It 
was read and studied. The mass of the people under- 
stood it, aye, before the politicians or the statesmen of 
the day yielded to it, the people sanctioned it. Three 
years afterwards, Mr. Webster felt it incumbent upon 
him, even more elaborately and with perhaps even 
more intellectual ability, to reiterate and reaffirm and 
re-demonstrate the truths of his Hayne speech ; and 
nobody will fail to remember the satisfaction with 
which he refers to his former effort, and the almost 
exultant tone in which he speaks of the fact that the 
people — the great mass of the American people — had 
grappled with this monster — nullification — had come 
then to fully understand it ; and that, therefore, there 
would be no danger from it hereafter. How true the 



70 



prediction ! There is no intelligent man in any of 
the ordinary walks of life, to-day, who does not fully 
understand and fully believe the great doctrine of 
that speech, and where, before had that doctrine 
been developed, so as to be brought within the 
reach of the common mind of the country. Well 
might Mr. Webster reflect upon that speech as the 
highest triumph in his great career. It settled forever 
the construction of the Constitution in its most vital 
part. It alone w T as sufficient to give immortality to 
its author, and it is perhaps the only oration since that 
great Oration for the crown which has conferred an 
honorable immortality upon his rival as well as upon 
the great orator himself. An intelligent people have 
grasped the subject — they understand it — they un- 
derstand the value of the Constitution — and the Un- 
ion — they not only swear by the Constitution and the 
Union, but they swear to maintain them against the 
world. There is no danger to either. They are in 
the keeping of an intelligent people — and so long as 
the principles of our peculiar American Liberty — as 
maintained and illustrated by the subject of our me- 
morial to-night shall be understood by the people of 
the country, so long shall the Constitution of the Union 
be perpetuated. 



71 

Prof. E. D. Sanborn's Speech. 

Dartmouth College has abundant reason to revere 
the memory of Mr. Webster ; and every son of Dart- 
mouth ought to rejoice to speak his praise ; not only 
because his name and fame, as her most distinguished 
alumnus, reflect honor upon the Institution which 
gave him his intellectual culture, but because, in the 
hour of her greatest peril, he plead her cause and 
saved her from utter extinction. To his peerless el- 
oquence and invincible logic, she owes her present 
existence. The kind regard which Mr. Webster en- 
tertained for his alma mater and his views of what 
constitutes a thorough Christian education, are very 
clearly exhibited, in a speech which he addressed to 
the Faculty and students of Dartmouth College, in 
1828. A brief extract will show the tenor of his 
remarks : 

" I am most happy, Mr. President and gentlemen, 
thus publicly to acknowledge my own deep obliga- 
tions to the college under your care. I feel that I owe 
it a debt, which may be acknowledged, indeed, but 
not repaired. And permit me to express my convic- 
tion of the high utility, to individuals and to society, 
of the vocation which you pursue. If there be any- 
thing important in life, it is the business of instruc- 
tion in religion, in morals and knowledge. He who 
labors upon objects wholly material, works upon that 
which, however improved, must one day perish. Nor 
such is the character, nor such is the destiny of that 
care which is bestowed on the cultivation of the mind 
and heart. Here the subject upon which attention is 
bestowed is immortal, and any benefit conferred upon 
it equally immortal. Whoever purifies one human 



72 



affection, whoever excites one emotion of sincere pi- 
ety, whoever gives a new and right direction to a hu- 
man thought, or corrects a single error of the under- 
standing, will already have wrought a work, the con- 
sequences of which may extend through ages, which 
no human enumeration can count and swell into a 
magnitude which no human estimate can reach." 

Mr. Webster's defence of the college, his high ap- 
preciation of all liberal learning, and his unvarying 
friendship for "old Dartmouth," claim for his memory 
the affectionate homage of all her graduates and friends. 

With great propriety did Judge Hopkinson declare 
that this inscription should be placed over the doors 
of her public Halls : " Founded by Elcazer Wheelock, 
refounded by Daniel Webster." 

But deeply indebted as the college is to Mr. Web- 
ster, our common country, as it seems to me, owes him 
equal gratitude ; and, — " parvis componere magnis," 
we might write as a fitting introduction to our excel- 
lent Constitution, "Established by the wisdom and 
labors of George Washington, preserved by the ge- 
nius and eloquence of Daniel Webster." 

The very maxims so appropriately selected from his 
speeches, to adorn these walls, give strength and per- 
manency to our glorious Union. Like the strong iron 
clamps and melted lead of the old Roman builders, 
"nee sevcrus Uncus abest liquidumoe plumbum," they 
bind together the separate political blocks which con- 
stitute the mightiest political edifice of this or any 
other age ; and will continue to do so, till our master 
builders bring forth the top stone with shoutings. 

But the public life and services of Mr. Webster are 



73 



known and read of all men. They have been suffi- 
ciently discussed, on other occasions, and especially, 
this evening, by the most illustrious orators of our 
country. It is not for me to follow in their steps, 
" non passibus scquis." This field has already been 
reaped, and the most that I could expect to do would 
be to follow, as a gleaner, and gather a few straws to 
weave a rustic garland for the tomb of departed great- 
ness. But there are some lighter traits of his character 
which, perhaps, on this festive occasion I may be per- 
mitted to sketch — such as do not strike the specta- 
tor of forensic or legislative debates. 

" The meaning of an extraordinary man," said Sid- 
ney Smith, " is that he is eight men, not one man ; 
that he has as much wit as if he had no sense, and as 
much sense as if he had no wit ; that his conduct is 
as judicious as if he were the dullest of men, and his 
imagination as brilliant as though he were irretrieva- 
bly ruined." Every truly great man is many-sided, 
or, to use a common phrase, " myriad-minded ; " there- 
fore different observers of him give a different account 
of him, according to the angle at which he is viewed, 
or the side on which he is approached. 

Mr. Webster's mind was of this description. He 
had intellectual material enough for a whole house- 
hold, aye, for a whole colony of ordinary men, women 
and children, so as to give to each his portion in due 
season. Those who met him only on public occasions, 
where the proprieties of time and place required a dig- 
nified and stately demeanor, pronounced him cold and 
formal, though courteous and polite. Those who lis- 
tened to the loftiest strains of his eloquence, " when 
10 



n 



public bodies were to be addressed on momentous oc- 
casions," were struck with awe at the majesty of his 
person, the severity of his logic, and the overwhelming 
power of his eloquence — or, rather, of what he de- 
nominates " action, noble, sublime, godlike action." 
To such men, he appeared to stand on an inaccessible 
height above them, and not to belong to the ordina- 
ry level of human sympathies. Let the same men 
listen to his calm, unimpassioned arguments before a 
learned Bench, where every sentence was fit for the 
press as it fell from his lips, and all his words were 
" like apples of gold in pictures of silver," always more 
weighty and enduring than they seemed to be, and 
they would pronounce him tame and prosy. Some- 
times the eager spectator, who had come a great dis- 
tance to be excited and amused, after listening to one 
of his ablest arguments went away disappointed, and 
like those who looked upon the simple dress and quiet 
manners of the noble old Eoman statesman, Agricola, 
demanded the proofs of his greatness. 

Their conviction was that he had made no extraor- 
dinary effort ; that any one might do as well ; but let 
the same critic read his argument if he be an intelli- 
gent man. He declares — " Ut sibi quivis speret idem ; 
sudet multum, frustraque laboret ausus idem." 

He was always appropriate to the occasion ; never 
above it ; never below it. This is one of the most re- 
markable features of his character. He could adapt 
himself to all times and places ; to all ages and sexes ; 
to all classes and conditions of men. He knew how 
to discourse, with equal propriety, to the child and the 
sage ; to the unlettered rustic and the erudite man of 



75 



science. He never obtruded his own opinions upon 
others, or attempted to controvert theirs. He had no 
hobbies of his own to advocate ; indeed he did not 
consult his own taste in selecting topics of conversa- 
tion. The pleasure of others was the law of his social 
intercourse. With the divine he talked of theology ; 
with the physician, of medicine ; with the scholar, of 
literature. This he did as much from principle as from 
politeness. He wished to be well informed on all the 
great subjects of human interest. His views on this 
subject are admirably illustrated in a letter to a young- 
lawyer just entering upon his profession. His letter 
was a reply to a declaration of the young attorney, 
"that he intended to devote himself wholly to his 
profession, 1 ' and that he read few books except those 
that related to the law. His answer was : 

" Your notions [about your studies] are quite right, 
as applicable to your own condition. You must study 
practical things. You are in the situation of the " haud 
facile emergunts," and must try all you can to get your 
head above water. Why should you botanize who 
have no right in the earth except a right to tread up- 
on it ! This is all very well. I thought so at your age ; 
and therefore, studied nothing but law and politics. 
I advise you to take the same course ; yet still a little 
time, have a few " horas subsecivas" in which to culti- 
vate liberal knowledge. It will turn to account even 
practically. If on a given occasion, a man can gracefully 
and without the air of a pedant, show a little more 
knowledge than the occasion requires, the world will 
give him credit for eminent attainments. It is an 
honest quackery. I have practised it, and sometimes 
with success. It is something like studying an ex- 
tempore speech, but even that done with address has 



76 



its effect. There is no doubt, at least, that the circle 
of useful knowledge is much broader than it can be 
proved to be in relation to any particular subject a 
priori. We find connections and coincidences, helps 
and succours where we did not expect them. I have 
never learned anything which I wish to forget except 
how badly some people have behaved, and I every 
day find on almost every subject, that I wish I had 
more knowledge than I possess, seeing that I could 
produce it, if not for use yet for effect.'" 

After the delivery of his discourse before the His^ 
torical Society, in New York, I met him, at the house 
of a mutual friend. He called me to a private room 
and presented to me some copies of his address, say- 
ing, at the same time, " what do you think of it, Mr. 
Professor V I replied : I have been both gratified 
and surprised by its perusal ; gratified at the generous 
appreciation of ancient authors, as they passed in re- 
view ; and surprised at your familiarity with their in- 
dividual peculiarities and excellencies. I did not sup- 
pose that, engrossed as you are, in public and profes- 
sional duties, you would be so well " posted up " in 
classic lore. Then he remarked : I have not been an 
idle man ; I have sometimes used books, and some- 
times men. What I had not leisure to acquire by 
study, I have often gained by conversation. Every 
literary and scientific gentleman, here present, who 
has enjoyed his pleasant society, will understand the 
full import of these words. They are happily illus- 
trated by an incident related of him by the late Dr. 
Hall of Washington. He was an eminent geologist. 
When Mr. Webster was a student this science was 



77 



unknown in our country. It grew up entirely while 
his mind was engrossed by public and professional 
duties. It became so prominent as often to force it- 
self upon his notice. He wished to obtain some just 
notions of its leading principles. He had no time to 
use books ; he therefore used men. He commenced 
with Dr. Hall. He called on him, one day, at his cab- 
inet, and said to him : " Dr. Hall, you have here a 
great variety of specimens of the rocks composing the 
crust of our globe ; now I want you to show me their 
relative position. — Please to take these fragments and 
build for me a little world on geological principles." 
The professor was, of course, happy to display his 
knowledge to such a pupil, and proceeded to lecture, 
for an hour, to an audience, " fit though few," or 
rather " sole, " possessing, perhaps, as much intelli- 
gence as any crowded assembly he had ever addressed. 
Young children, too, found in him a boon compan- 
ion. He was eminently attractive to children ; and 
there are no better judges of kindness and sympathy 
than they. Their feelings move them, apparently by 
instinct, to cling to those who naturally take pleasure 
in their society. So the vine clings, with caressing 
tendrils, to the living tree ; but train it against a mar- 
ble wall, and it never aspires ; but falling backward 
trails along the ground. There was a fascination in 
Mr. Webster's eye and in the tones of his voice which 
made children seek his caresses. They followed him, 
as he paced the floor, in meditation, and hung upon 
the skirts of his coat ; and when he turned and snap- 
ped at them, showing all his white teeth, they clap- 
ped their hands and shouted as they scampered away 



78 



to some dark nook, ready to renew their attack as 
soon as his back was turned. His little grand-chil- 
dren used to stand upon his knees, place their hands 
on the top of his head and kiss his forehead. He was 
delighted. It seemed, he said, like a heavenly bene- 
diction from these little innocents. 

The late Webster Kelley, Esq., informed me that 
when he was ten or twelve years of age, Mr. Webster 
came to his father's house and proposed an excursion 
to the top of Keasearge, which they accomplished on 
the following day. As he came along side of the boy 
he said : — " Well, my son, what are you studying at 
school 1 " " Virgil," he replied. "At what point in 
the epic 1 " " In the ninth book." " What is the 
situation of the parties % " " iEneas," said the boy, "is 
gone away in search of aid. The Trojans are fighting 
Turnus, and I suppose he will kill them all or drive 
them out of Italy." " Oh ! no," said Mr. Webster, 
" -/Eneas will take care of him." " But," said the boy, 
" I thought he was more famed for his piety than his 
valor." " You are mistaken, my lad," said he, " he 
was the greatest warrior the Trojans had except 
Hector. He is now absent; when he returns he 
will destroy Turnus and his army, and the Trojans 
will settle in Italy." During the whole time he kept 
up these pleasing and instructive allusions to the 
studies of the boy, and left an impression on his 
mind which was never effaced. When they reached 
the top of the mountain they seated themselves 
for a lunch. Mr. Webster cut a piece of ham and 
offered it to the boy. He hesitated to take it in his 
fingers. " Oh ! take it, my son," said Mr. Webster, 



79 



" fingers were made before forks. lulus never saw a 
fork in his life." On such occasions he was full of 
life and glee. He ran and leaped and shouted, 
making the woods ring, too, with his merry peals of 
laughter. 

The same party that climbed Keasearge, on another 
occasion ascended Mount Washington together. In 
the morning, Mr. Webster ran, sung and shouted, 
and seemed as playful as a child. Ethan Crawford, 
with a sort of parental gravity, said to him — " You 
will sing another song, sir, before night." But the 
fatigue of climbing did not abate his cheerfulness and 
love of fun ; on the contrary, his spirits rose with the 
elevation of the mountain. This natural buoyancy of 
spirits was only repressed by public cares. Public life 
made him grave and taciturn in mixed society. His 
brother, Ezekiel was cautious and deliberate. He was 
less accessible to strangers, but eminently social with 
friends. It was characteristic of both brothers to dis- 
course in a free and familiar manner on important 
topics to the members of their respective families. 
Daniel used to say — "When I can present a matter 
to Ezekiel and get his deliberate opinion upon it, I 
am sure to be right." Neither of the brothers indul- 
ged in repartees or jeux d'esprits in debate. Occasion- 
aly, however, they admitted a playful remark into 
their discussions. When Ezekiel Webster was in full 
practice at the bar, he was employed to defend the will 
of Roger Perkins of Hopkinton. The physician made 
affidavit that the testator was struck with death when 
he signed his will. Mr. Webster subjected his testi- 
monv to a most searching examination ; showing, by 



80 



quoting medical authorities, that doctors disagree as 
to the precise moment when a dying man is struck 
with death ; some affirming that it is at the commence- 
ment of the fatal disease ; others at its climax, and 
others still affirm that we begin to die as soon as we 
are born. " I should like to know," said Mr. Sullivan, 
" what doctor, maintains that theory." " Dr. Watts," 
said Mr. Webster, with great gravity — 



" The moment we begin to live 
We all begin to die." 



b 



The reply convulsed the Court and audience with 
laughter. 

Numerous letters written by these brothers, now in 
existence, and which are soon to see the light, furnish 
abundant proof of their mutual confidence, and partic- 
ularly of the high estimate which Daniel set upon his 
brother's advice. In a letter dated April, 1804, Eze- 
kiel gives his opinion on a question proposed by 
Daniel, as follows: — "Agreeably to your injunction, 
I have thought and meditated upon your letter for 
three days and for no inconsiderable portion of three 
nights, and I now give you the result as freely as I 
earnestly wish your welfare. I am decidedly opposed 
to your going to New York, and for several reasons. 

The expensivcness of a journey to, and a residence 
in that place, is with me, a material objection. "Se- 
condly, the embarrassments to which you will be sub- 
jected, without finances to assist or patronage to sup- 
port. Thirdly, I fear the climate would be fatal to your 
constitution. I have now told vou what I would not 



81 



have you do ; and I also tell you what I desire you 
to do. I would have you decamp immediately from 
Salisbury, with all your baggage, and inarch directly 
to this place." Then he goes on to state the reasons 
for this opinion which he had maturely formed. They 
were substantially the same which ultimately influ- 
enced Mr. Webster to remove to Boston. 

Daniel's estimate of his brother's endowments may 
be learned from the following extract from a letter 
dated April 25, 1800 : — " You tell me that you have 
difficulties to encounter which I know nothing of. 
What do you mean, Ezekiel ? Do you mean to flat- 
ter \ If so, be assured, you greatly mistake. There- 
fore, for the future, say in your letters to me, ' I am 
superior to you in natural endowments ; I will know 
more, in one year, than you do now ; and more in six, 
than you ever will.' I should not resent this lan- 
guage ; I should be very well pleased in hearing it ; 
but, be assured, as mighty as you are, your great puis- 
sance should never gain a victory without a contest." 
Whenever the brothers met, in after years, and in 
better circumstances, they were accustomed to re- 
hearse, with great glee, the trials and hardships of 
their youth. 

On one occasion, when Ezekiel was on a visit to 
his brother, in Boston, after rising from a sumptuous 
dinner, Ezekiel turned to his brother and said, with 
great solemnity, " Daniel, do you think we shall live 
till morning X " " Why % What do you mean \ " said 
Daniel. " Don't you remember," said Ezekiel, " how, 
when we were boys, at a certain time, we had no meal 
in the house, and could get no corn ground, and our 
11 



82 



mother fed us on potatoes and milk ; and after the 
first supper, going up to bed, you turned round upon 
the broad stair, and asked, with great seriousness, 
" Ezekiel, do you think we shall live till morning V 
" Why \ ' ; said I. " Only think what stuff we have 
been eating." 

Money, so difficult then to be earned or hired, in- 
finitely more so, than it is now, occupied many of the 
thoughts and plans of these young men Daniel, in 
one of his early letters, intimated that he should soon 
forward a small sum to Ezekiel, then in college. He 
replied : — " The very hint seemed to dispel the gloom 
that was thickening around me. It seemed like a 
momentary flash that suddenly bursts through a night 
of clouds, or, as Young says : — 



' So look'd in chaos, the"first beam of light. 



> j? 



In 1802, Daniel writes to Ezekiel, with reference 
to funds: — "I have now by me two cents in lawful 
Federal money. Next week I will send them, if they 
be all ; they will buy a pipe — with a pipe you can 
smoke — smoking inspires wisdom ; wisdom is allied 
to fortitude ; from fortitude, it is but one step to stoi- 
cism, and stoicism never pants for this world's goods. 
So, perhaps, my two cents, by this process, may put 
you quite at ease about cash." 

In another letter he writes, in parody of an old 



song: 



Fol de rol, dol de dol di dol ; 
I'll never make money my idol, 
For away our dollars will fly all ; 



S3 

With my friend and my pitcher 
I'm twenty times richer 
Than if I made money my idol, 
Fol de dol, dol de dol, di dol. 

In 1805 he had ordered some law books which, he 
deemed essential to his professional success ; but the 
money to pay the price of them could not be found 
by the agency of both the brothers ; he therefore 
wrote to Ezekiel, then in Boston, as follows : — " As 
yet, I find it not in my power to procure any money 
for the purpose of paying for my books. I therefore 
am under the necessity of requesting you to make my 
peace with Mr. H. Parker. Give him something if 
aught you have to give, to indemnity him for his 
trouble and expense, and ask him to put the books 
again on his shelves ; or, if anybody in Boston is fool 
enough to lend you the money, please to buy them 
for me." The generosity of the bookseller, however, 
enabled him to keep them. 

In the same letter he remarks : — " Some little 
business is done here and I get a part of it. In time, 
perhaps, I shall gratify my moderate and rational 
wishes/' Previous to this date, it appears that he 
had once procured the purchase money of the books 
and lost it by his agent. He wrote respecting the 
loss : — "It is utterly out of my power to repair the 
loss of eighty-five dollars. I hired that money of a 
friend in Salisbury, and cannot, as I know, hire again 
a like sum." 

In a letter to a classmate in 1803, he says: — 
" Zeke is at Sanbornton ; he comes home once in a 



84 



while, sits down before the kitchen fire, begins to 
poke and rattle the andirons ; I know what is coming, 
and am mute. At length he puts his feet up into the 
mouth of the oven, draws his right eyebrow up upon 
his forehead, and begins a very pathetic lecture on the 
evils of poverty. It is like church service ; he does 



all the talking, and I only respond, amen ; amen ! " 

In his early days Mr. Webster wrote some very 
good poetry. In one instance, in particular, he ad- 
dressed some pretty stanzas, to a lady who offered to 
make him a purse for three verses of poetry. The 
last stanza of the three written to secure the purse is 
as follows : — 

And thus Parnassian gifts are sold, 

The better and the worse ; 
Pope wrote for bags of glittering gold, 

I for an empty purse. 

Then he addressed a poem, of considerable length, 
in a different metre, to the lady who made the purse. 
From this we select two stanzas. The purse itself he 
thus apostrophises : — 

By avarice unsoiled, may'st thou ever abide, 
And thy strings against the price of corruption be tied; 
May thy owner, from sorrow, its pittance ne'er squeeze, 
Nor tarnish thy lustre with ill-gotten fees. 

Yet may fortune supply thee with plentiful store, 
And the world of its cash grant enough and no more, 
While thy contents with children of want I divide, 
Nor half the last cent to a friend be denied. 



85 



The address to Daniel Abbott, Esq., who was the 
bearer of the poetic epistle, was as follows : — 

When Allan Ramsay once sent greeting 

A sonnet to his Miss, 
He told the bearer at their meeting 

For his reward to take a kiss. 
Now Daniel, though you love not pelf, 

You'll sorely like so sweet a fee; 
You'll find a dozen for yourself, 

Yet if you please take one for me. 

Some of his early contributions to the public jour- 
nals exhibit more than ordinary poetic talent. We 
will quote one little morceau, from the Dartmouth 
Gazette, dated July 24, 1802: — 

[For the Dartmouth Gazette, July 24, 1S02.] 

"AH ME AND WAS IT I?" 

Damon the handsome and the young, 

Before me breathed his sighs ; 
Love gave the rhetoric to his tongue 

The lustre to his eyes. 
A nymph, he said, had waked a flame, 

That never more would die. 
And softly whispered out her name — 

Ah me ! and was it I ? 
With joy, I heard his tale reveal'd, 

Yet like a gairish fool 
The rapture which I felt, concealed; 

For woman loves to rule. 
Not all his vows nor all his tears, 

One love-like smile could gain ; 
I mock'd his hopes, incrcas'd his fears, 



86 

And triumph' d in his pain. 
At length forlorn he tvtrn'd away, 

Nor more for me would sigh ; 
But left me to remorse a prey — > 

Ah trie and was it I? Icabus. 

It was quite common at dinner parties for gentle- 
men who knew Mr. Webster's inimitable power of 
narration in giving grace and point to the happy 
turns of an anecdote, to call on him t© repeat some 
favorite story. At Washington, I heard him relate 
an incident in the life of Randolph with great effect. 
The dates and references cannot accurately be recall- 
ed, but sometime during the first years of Mr. Web- 
ster's service, in Congress, Mr. Calhoun was speaking 
upon a proposition to require all the government dues 
to be paid in silver and gold. He was opposed to the 
measure; argued its inconvenience to the agents of 
the government with great ability, and incidentally 
asserted that in no instance had our government ever 
resorted to such a measure. Mr. Webster, sitting by 
Randolph's side, said to him : — "He is mistaken on 
that point ; for there is a post office law in the year 
17 — requiring deputies to receive only silver and 
gold in payment of postage." " Is there such a law \ ' 
said Randolph, with great eagerness ; " show it to 
me." Mr. Webster stepped to the Clerk's desk and 
selected the volume of United States laws which con- 
tained the enactment alluded to, and opening to the 
very page where it was found, gave the book to Ran- 
dolph. He studied it attentively, noted the page, 
chapter and section. The moment Mr. Calhoun took 
his scat, Randolph rose, and in his shrill and harsh 



87 



tones, shouted : — " Mr. Speaker," and gaining his 
attention, he proceeded to say : — " Nil admirari, is 
one of the beautiful and sententious maxims of Horace 
which I learned in my boyhood, and to this day I 
have been wont to believe in its truth and to follow it 
in practice. But I give it up. It is no longer a rule 
of my life. I do wonder and am utterly astonished that 
a man who assumes to legislate for the country should 
be so utterly ignorant of its existing laws. The gen- 
tleman mentions that the bill before the House intro- 
duces a new provision into our legislation. He does 
not know that it has ever been incorporated into any 
statute by any Congress in our country's history, when 
it has been a common usage almost from the infancy 
of our nation. Macgruder," screamed the excited 
orator to one of the clerks, " Macgruder, take vol.*** 
of the United States laws, page 150, chapter 16, sec- 
tion 10, and read." The clerk read: — " Be it enact- 
ed, &c, that all the dues of postal department shall 
be paid in silver and gold," &c. "Witness," said 
Randolph, " the gentleman's innocent simplicity, his 
utter want of acquaintance with the laws of the land 
for which he affects to be a leading legislator. Now, 
Mr. Speaker, I was educated to know the laws of my 
country. The law just recited has been familiar to me 
from childhood ; indeed, I cannot remember the time 
when I did not know it ; yet simple and elementary 
as it is, the gentleman, in his superficial study of our 
laws, has overlooked it." 

Richard M. Johnson and Mr. Webster, though op- 
posed to each other on political opinions, were always 
on good terms, as private friends. When Mr. Johnson 



88 



was Vice-President, some private bill was before the 
Senate, upon the merits of which Mr. Webster had. 
conferred with Mr. Johnson, and inferred from his 
conversation that he approved of its provisions. It 
happened, when the vote was taken upon its passage, 
that the Senate was equally divided. Of course the 
decisive vote was given by the Vice-President. He. 
much to Mr. Webster's surprise, voted against it. Af- 
ter the rejection of the bill, Mr. Webster stepped up 
to the desk of the presiding- officer, and said, softly: — 
" Mr. Johnson, I rather relied on your vote to carry 
this measure. I feel a little disappointed at your 
vote. I have always found you true to your profes- 
sions on other occasions." " Oh," said Mr. Johnson, 
" we all mistake sometimes. We are frail and erring- 
creatures, liable to get out of the way. The world, 
you know, ivabbles a little." 

Both the brothers were distinguished for their fine 
social qualities. In no place was Mr. Daniel Web- 
ster more attractive than at his own fireside. Here 
he showed that genuine wit described by Sidney 
Smith, which " penetrates through the coldness and 
awkwardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer 
together, and, like the combined force of wine and 
oil, giving every man a glad heart and a shining- 
countenance." This trait of character, so amiable and 
winning, he inherited from his honored father. Wri- 
ting to his son in 1840, he says: — "I believe we are 
all indebted to my fathers mother for a large portion 
of the little sense and character which belong to us. 
Her name was Susannah Bachclder ; she was the 
daughter of a clergyman, and a woman of uncommon 
strength of understanding." 



89 



All the letters of Mr. Webster are models of episto- 
latory composition, simple, graceful, pertinent, show- 
ing the right words in the right places, and abounding 
in kindness even to his foes. Mr. "Webster early made 
it a principle, in writing, to put nothing upon paper 
which might not be printed the next day without in- 
jury to himself or others. He followed this rule so 
implicitly, that if all his letters should be published 
to-morrow, no man would have reason to complain 
that the character of the dead was injured, or the feel- 
ings of the living wounded. His self-control in speak- 
ing of his political opponents, even of those who had 
wronged him, grieviously wronged him, and in refu- 
ting their charges, is quite as remarkable as any fea- 
ture of his character. It is scarcely probable to so many 
letters, essays and speeches — covering so long a pe- 
riod of violent political controversy — can be found in 
the world's history so free from personal attacks and 
unkind cuts as the unpublished correspondence and 
speeches of Mr. Webster. He does not even " damn 
by faint praise," or " hesitate dislike," when he deals 
with an adversary. He yields to him all the advan- 
tage which nature, education, or private character 
may give him, and advances to the conflict without 
ambuscade or false lures, in the open field, with no 
other weapons but sound argument and brilliant ora- 
tory. His forthcoming correspondence will show Mr. 
Webster, in his letters, as he thought, spoke, and 
acted in private life. Every phase of his character 
will be exhibited. The epistles to his brother and 
classmates, and the correspondence of his student life, 
will show where he wandered in the realms of science 
and literature, what authors he chose for his private 
12 



90 



teachers, and how he moulded and matured his pol- 
ished English style. His early struggle with poverty, 
his warm friendship, which terminated only at hi s 
death, are there depicted with the vividness of real life. 

Mr. Webster's works will constitute a rich legacy 
to coming generations, which, unlike all other estates, 
will be enhanced in value, by minute division and 
individual appropriation. 

The Hon. George T. Davis of Greenfield, was next 
called upon, but he declined speaking, saying that 
his substitute, Hon. William G. Bates of Westfield, 
had a written speech (laughter) which he was anxious 
to deliver. Mr. Bates said he had no speech ; but he 
wished to offer the following resolutions : — 

Resolved, That a committee of three persons be appointed 
by the Chairman of this meeting, to notify a meeting of the 
friends of Mr. Webster, to assemble in the city of Boston, on 
the 18th ot January, 1857. 

Resolved, That the persons present at this meeting re- 
solve themselves into an association to inculcate and carry 
out the principles as to the importance and perpetuity of the 
Union, and the great national questions which Mr. Webster, 
by his life and speeches, so eloquently enforced and illus- 
trated. 

These resolutions were unanimously adopted, and 
the Chairman said he would take time to appoint the 
committee. 

Adolphus Davis, Esq., gave the following toast: — 

Cape Cod College — the plough handles — May she con- 
ceive once more, and bring forth another General ! 

The festivities ended at twelve o'clock. The Ban- 
quet was a demonstration worthy of the Birth-Day of 
Daniel Webster. There was one man absent — by 
reason of severe illness — who was greatly missed. 
The compiler of this pamphlet was permitted to know 



91 



that he made more than common exertion to be pres- 
ent on the occasion, and sincerely desired to unite 
with Mr. Everett and the other distinguished and ac- 
complished gentlemen — who spoke during the even- 
ing — in paying, once again, his public tribute to the 
memory of Mr. Webster. Had Mr. Choate been in 
any condition of health to justify the risk of his at- 
tendance, he would have been at the dinner, and would 
have added another to the series of his masterly eulo- 
gies of the great statesman — not inferior in freshness 
and grandeur, we may venture to say, — to any of 
his previous performances. 

Letters were received from United States Senators 
Crittenden of Kentucky, Bell of Tennessee, Kusk of 
Texas, Cass of Michigan, and others. 

We insert here, the following letter from Gen. 

Cass: — 

Washington, Jan. 10, 1856. 

Dear Sir, — I cannot accept your invitation to meet 
the friends of Mr. Webster on the 18th inst., the an- 
niversary of his birth-day, in order to interchange re- 
collections of the patriot, and orator and statesman, 
because my public duties will necessarily detain me 
here. To these and other high claims to distinction 
in life, and to fame in death, he added for me the as- 
sociations of early youth, and the kindness and friend- 
ship of mature age, as well as of declining years. I 
have read with deep and mournful interest the extract 
from his letter to you, which you were good enough 
to inclose, written at the termination of the struggle 
which attended the compromise measure of 1850, in 
which he says that " General Cass, General Husk, 
Mr. Dickenson, &c., have agreed that since our en- 
trance upon the stage of public action, no crisis has 
occurred fraught with so much danger to the institu- 
tions of the country as that through which it has just 



92 

passed, and that, in all human probability, no other 
of so great moment will occur again during the re- 
mainder of our lives, and therefore we will hereafter 
be friends, let our political differences on minor sub- 
jects be what they may." This tribute of affectionate 
regard to his coadjutors in a common struggle against 
a common peril, from him, whose sendees were so 
pre-eminent, will be cherished, I am sure, with proud 
recollection by all of us, to whom these words of kind- 
ness now come from the tomb. You say that this en- 
gagement, on the part of our lamented friend, was, to 
your personal knowledge, faithfully kept. It was so. 
I know it, and rejoice at it. And I believe I may add, 
with not less assurance, that the conviction you ex- 
press of the same fidelity to this bond of union and 
esteem on the part of those who co-operated with him, 
is equally well founded, and that, though death has 
dissolved the connection, yet his name and his fame 
are dear to them, and will ever find in them zealous 
advocates and defenders. 

The grave closed upon this great statesman and 
American before another crisis fraught with evil pas- 
sions and imminent dangers had come to shake his 
confidence in the permanency of the wise and healing 
measures of 1850. What he did not live to see, his 
associates in that work of patriotism, the whole coun- 
try indeed now sees, that we have again fallen upon 
evil times, and that the fountains of agitation are 
broken up, and the waters are out over the land. 
There is no master spirit to say Peace be still, and to 
be heard and heeded. Our trust is in the people of 
this great republican confederation, and yet more in 
the God of their fathers and their own God, who 
guided and guarded us through the dreary wilderness 
of the revolution, and brought us to a condition of 
freedom and prosperity, of which the history of the 
world furnishes no previous example. Would that 
the eloquent accents, which are now mute in death ; 
would that the burning words of him whose birth you 
propose to commemorate, and of his great compeer of 



93 



the West, though dead, yet living in the hearts of his 
countrymen, could now be heard warning the Amer- 
ican people of the dangers impending over them, and 
calling them to the support of that Union and Consti- 
tution which have done so much for them and for 
their fathers, and are destined to do so much more for 
them and for their children, if not sacrificed upon the 
altar of a new Moloch, Avhose victims may be the in- 
stitutions of our country. If this sectional agitation 
goes on, this ever pressing effort to create and perpet- 
uate diversions between the North and the South, 
we shall find that we cannot live together in peace, 
and shall have to live together in war. And what 
such a condition would bring with it between inde- 
pendent countries, thus situated, once friends, but 
become enemies, the impressive narrative of the fate 
of the Grecian republics teaches us as plainly as the 
future can be taught by the lessons of the past. Your 
own state took a glorious part in the war of indepen- 
dence, and it contribited ably and faithfully to the 
adoption of the Constitution. Her great deeds and 
great names are inscribed upon the pages of our his- 
tory, and upon the hearts of our countrymen. How 
would he who loved and served her so well, and 
whose love and service were so honorable to her — 
how would he deplore the position she has assumed 
towards the government of our common country, and 
the solemn provisions of its Constitution, were he now 
living to witness the triumph of sectional feelings 
over the dictates of duty and patriotism'? Let us 
hope that this is but a temporary delusion, and that 
it will soon pass away, leaving our institution un- 
scathed, and the fraternal tie which still binds us 
together unimpaired. 

I am, dear sir, with much regard, respectfully yours 5 

LEWIS CASS. 
Peter Harvey, Esq., Boston. 



94 

Letter from Col. Bullock. 

Worcester, 18th January, 1856. 

My Dear Sir, — I regret that in consequence of the 
state of my health I must forego the pleasure of my 
engagement to be with the friends of our great de- 
parted statesman this evening. The occasion will be 
one of intense and gratifying interest, and it only 
remains for me to express to you my deepest sympa- 
thy in all the reminiscences of the hour. Almost as 
if he were now in the midst of us, — so gently has 
time as yet dealt with our memory, — we can recall 
him, with his august form, his kind, parental eye, his 
genial smile, or in his solemn mien, as he was wont 
to appear among you in Boston, in the scenes of his 
forensic triumph and social pastime ; or at Marshfield, 
whither he many a time repaired, upon his broad 
acres, and by the side of the sea, to seek a refuge from 
the cares of state. And yet, though it is not difficult 
to invest the imagination with his ideal presence, there 
is, after all, abundant and painful evidence in the 
present distracted condition of public affairs that the 
great genius of Daniel Webster, the fullness of his 
wisdom, and the compass of his patriotism, have de- 
parted. Never were they more needed than now, and 
at no time has there been a greater exigency for his 
instructions and his counsels. But though he has 
gone, his works have not followed him. The value 
of his written and spoken words, and above all, of his 
patriotic example in every emergency which threaten- 
ed our common welfare, remains undimmed by the 
passage of time, and will receive additional lustre with 
every year that sets its seal upon his tomb. 

It is in this view of his character and his services, 
that we need not regret that Mr. Webster was not 
chosen President of the United States ; for he will be 
the teacher of Presidents and Cabinets while the 
Union shall last. We need not regard that to his head 
was not assigned a place in that charmed circle of 



95 



medallions which represents all the Presidents and 
hangs upon the walls of so many edifices ; for rather, 
far rather, would we have it stand out isolated upon 
the canvas, in its own classic and unshackled pro- 
portions, awakening the remembrance of his more 
than heroic deeds, and challenging the admiration of 
patriotic and intelligent men, from generation to 
generation. 

Let us, then, my dear sir, bring the lessons which 
he gave us while living, still closer to our hearts, and 
cherish his memory by following his example and 
instructions. Let us as citizens walk in the national 
pathway which he marked out, illumined as it is by 
the noblest eloquence of modern times, and termina- 
ting in the permanent peace of this Union. What- 
ever invitations may beckon us in any other direction, 
— whatever temporary issues, or transient excite- 
ments, or sectional animosities, may spring up around 
us and allure us elsewhere, let it be be our resolute 
purpose to adhere sternly to the Constitution, which, 
as it is by its origin forever associated with the names 
of Hamilton and Madison, will in its beneficent devel- 
opment and progress bear to the latest posterity the 
renown of him whose name will be this evening upon 
all our lips and in all our hearts. In this spirit, 
though I cannot be with you, I pledge to you my 
hearty co-operation in whatever shall do honor to the 
name of Webster ; " a great and venerated name, a 
name which has made this country respected in every 
other on the globe." 

I remain, very truly, your ob't serv't, 

A. H. BULLOCK. 

Peter Harvey, Esq., Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



Preface 3 

The names of the subscribers to the dinner 5 

The dinner and the hall decorations 9 

Prayer of Rev. Chandler Robbins 11 
Speech of Hon. Edward Everett . 12 

" of Hon. George S. Hillard 41 

Poem of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes 49 

Speech of Gen. Nye, of New York 52 

Hon. Robert H. Shenck, of Ohio 58 

Hon. George Ashmun, of Springfield 60 

Hon. Henry C. Deming, of Connecticut 63 

Hon. Otis P. Lord, of Salem 65 
Prof. E. D. Sanborn, of Dartmouth College 71 
Remarks of Hon. George T. Davis, of Greenfield, and 

resolutions of Hon. William G. Bates, of Westfield 90 

Letter of Gen. Cass 91 

" Hon. A. H. Bullock 94 



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